Harry Potter the Wizard Acromantula
by Joshua The Evil Guy
Summary: HBP-AU  Not a Marvel Crossover...yet. Harry Potter has just received a great power and now he finds himself bearing a greater responsibility to use that power for good. But before that, he has to learn how to use it. Sequel to "Mark of the Acromantula"
1. Issue One of Six

Title: Harry Potter the Wizard Acromantula

Author: Joshua

Disclaimer: JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me. I'm basing this on equal parts from the book and the movie, the Harry Potter book and movie that is. The book goes into more detail, but some parts of the movie are... better I think. In particular all the scenes involving Luna.

Summary: HBP-AU Not a Marvel Crossover...yet. Harry Potter has just received a great power and now he finds himself bearing a greater responsibility to use that power for good. But before that, he has to learn how to use it.

Story:

1

Harry Potter was running through the Forbidden Forest. Well, that wasn't entirely accurate, but then the typical metaphor of flying wasn't accurate either. He was running at a speed that only a unicorn or a centaur could keep up with, and he was jumping and leaping through the branches of the trees better than any monkey you'd care to name!

All while wearing a full body skintight silver/white suit made entirely of Acromantula silk.

He'd started his run from the unicorn herd and was within sight of the edge of the forest and Hagrid's hut. He'd begun less than fifteen minutes earlier.

Once he reached the edge of the forest, staying high in the trees, hidden by the leaves and branches all around him while he stuck to the side of the trunk, he waited. He took a moment to look over himself and was amazed at what he was now doing. It should have been impossible, even for magic, but here he was, in the best shape of his life and hanging to the side of a smooth tree trunk by his open palms and feet flush against it. There wasn't even a branch nearby, all of them either too thin to support his weight, or too far down for him to stand upon. And supposedly this was only the beginning.

"Bloody hell, this is insane," he said to himself, shaking his head. Looking around, he saw that nobody was out on the lawn and Hagrid wasn't in his hut either. The sun was only just beginning to set, twilight coming out as the shadows grew longer. Knowing he needed to get back in the castle, sooner rather than later, and preferably without anyone seeing him in his current getup, he knew he'd have to make a run for it. Once he was inside the outer walls, well, then he could decide about how he was going to actually get inside.

"Dinner should be starting soon," he kept up the commentary, if only to keep himself from panicking. "And if I'm not there, safe bet that Ron and Hermione, at the least, are going to raise an alarm or two. Which means I need to get inside, and to my trunk with my clothes in it before they start an actual search. Sure, Harry, just don't make it _too_ hard on yourself!"

He sighed, "Well, I'm not getting anywhere just sitting here talking to myself. Let's do this!"

With that, Harry jumped as high, as far, and as hard as he could away from the tree he was rested against. If any had been watching, they would have been amazed to see the silver/white figure soar in an arc through the heavens that actually traversed the distance between the edge of the forest and the wall of Hogwarts Castle. Unfortunately, only just, so when Harry came down at a very high speed, his landing was going to be somewhere on the actual stone wall. For most people this would be a sign of sure death. For Harry, all he did was do a quick mid-air flip and he landed solidly against the wall with his feet and hands connecting first.

Rather than crashing and smashing himself in a rather wet sounding smack, his muscles coiled and absorbed the shock, while his bones didn't so much as bend under the compression of force and momentum meeting an immovable object. Rather he stuck there to the wall by his hands and feet and the rest of him never so much as grazed the stone structure.

Feeling a bit giddy from the adrenaline rush, Harry giggled softly and whispered, "Wicked!" He then started to crawl up the side of the wall, not feeling for handholds or footing at all and once he'd gotten more than halfway up it was clear he wouldn't need them either.

After he reached the top of the wall, he fit himself on top of one of the parapets, hands and feet together so his knees and shoulders stuck out at bit. With his head bowed, he was sure that from a distance he looked like one the castle's many gargoyles. Looking around, he saw that there were a few people still in the courtyards and quad areas, but they too were heading inside and from the lights that shone from the windows, he saw that the Great Hall was gearing up towards dinner.

"Need to move," he whispered quietly to himself. He knew he wasn't going to risk going inside, not dressed like this, which meant going outside. Given that he'd just proved to himself that he could do it, he wasn't worried about the how, just the where.

It took him a couple minutes, and jumping and crawling to different points along the wall, but he soon found what he was sure was Gryffindor Tower. Taking a running leap, he jumped as high as he could on it, but unfortunately he wasn't as close as he'd hoped he'd be to the window to his dorm room, the one for Sixth Years. Climbing, and making sure to avoid the windows at all costs, he moved as quickly as he could and only risked a look when he felt he was getting closer. He soon found out that boys and girls alternated floors, but of course nobody could know that given that they had separate stairwells.

When he caught sight of Hermione on her bed reading a rather large book, he knew he was close. Sure enough, the next floor up was the window to his dorm room. He glanced in quickly, then seeing no one he took a longer look and made sure before opening the window. Once he was inside, he knew he was safe, for the time being anyway. Not wanting to risk any more than he already had, Harry quickly grabbed a change of clothes and ran towards the showers. He stripped off the skintight clothing he'd transfigured out of a Acromantula silk cocoon, washed as quickly as he ever had, dried off even quicker and dressed before racing back to hide the silver/white suit at the bottom of his trunk.

The moment his trunk was closed, the door to the dorm opened and in walked his best friend, Ron Weasley. Harry did his best not to look guilty as the redhead yelled at him.

"Harry! Where've you been mate? Hermione and I have been looking all over for you? Did you just take a shower?" Ron asked.

"Uh, yeah," Harry shrugged, guessing his hair wasn't quite dry yet. He went ahead and finished getting dressed at a normal pace, though all he had left to put on were his socks, shoes and jacket.

"Did you leave your glasses in there too?" Ron said, "You look kinda funny without them."

Harry frowned and looked up, about to ask him what he was talking about. Then he realized he _wasn't_ wearing his glasses, and hadn't pretty much since the Aragog's children had almost killed him earlier that day. They'd probably fallen off after he'd tripped and they'd cocooned him, but since he'd woken up with the unicorns, he'd honestly never noticed. He could see perfectly fine without his glasses. In fact, he glanced around the room, it seemed as though he could now see _better_ than he ever could with them!

"Harry?" Ron prompted when his friend didn't answer.

"Let's go down to dinner, Ron," Harry distracted his friend. "I've had a long day."

"Uh... okay?" the redhead could only shrug and follow along.

At dinner down in the Great Hall, Ron 'warned' Hermione that Harry was in a 'mood', even while Harry was sat there next to them. Although Harry did have to admit he was somewhat grateful when his male friend advised his female friend to not ask him where he'd been or what he'd been doing all day. Unfortunately, that still left a large range of uncomfortable topics the curious brunette could ask about.

"Harry, where are your glasses?" Hermione asked.

Harry just shrugged, relieved that she asked the question right as he began to drink from his goblet. As such, he probably drunk more than he'd intended while struggling to come up with some plausible answer. Unfortunately, he came up empty. So, he decided to stall, and keep stalling until either he got an idea, or she stopped asking, whichever happened first.

"Sorry, what?" he asked as he finally took away the goblet.

"Your glasses? Where are they? How can you even see without them?" she reiterated.

"My glasses?" he adopted what he hoped was a confused expression on his face.

"Yes, your glasses!" she repeated.

"What about them?" he reached for another platter and refilled his goblet, just in case.

"Where are they?" she exclaimed.

He swallowed and took another long pull from his goblet. "Sorry, what?"

She narrowed her eyes and asked again, "Where are they?"

"Where's what?" he began to suspect that she might very well give up soon.

"Your glasses!" she screamed.

"What about them?" he asked again, a perfectly innocent expression on his face. Given that he was scrambling still to come up with something to tell them, he saw absolutely no humor in the current conversation, though everyone around them were hiding smiles and laughter as best they could.

"Where are your glasses?" Hermione asked more slowly.

He blinked and then finally decided to go with the honest truth. He shrugged and replied, "I don't know."

"Well, how can you even see without them? I happen to know you have a very high prescription!"

He just shrugged, and since he was currently devouring a chicken leg, he didn't bother answering. Now that he thought about it, he noticed that he was really hungry! He grabbed another platter and also pulled over the salad bowl. He didn't bother putting any on his plate, he just started eating right out of the bowl itself, pouring on dressing to every bite on the way to his mouth.

"Harry... uh," Hermione stopped herself before asking anything else, just watching Harry eat for a moment. It wasn't as disturbing as the open-mouthed napkin-free display across from her, but she'd _never_ seen Harry eat so much. She soon amended that after he grabbed a _fifth_ platter and a second salad bowl, one that was meant to feed the whole table. She'd never seen _anyone_ eat so much in one sitting before!

"Harry, are you feeling all right?" she'd timed her question so she'd asked it by the time he swallowed his latest mouthful.

"Yeah, just... surprisingly hungry," he replied, grabbing another platter, this one filled with deserts. "Had a... trying day is all. Nothing to worry about, trust me." And then he was eating again.

At least he used a napkin once in a while and chewed with his mouth closed, she acknowledged to herself. But it was worrying. Had something happened to Harry during the day? Had somebody hit him with a curse to make him fat? Or worse, try to poison him?

"Are you sure?" she asked, worried.

"Mm-hmm," he answered as best he could with his mouth full of pie. Somehow he'd managed to get himself a sampler platter that contained at least one slice of every pie, cake, and tart that was offered for desert. And he was eating every last crumb.

"Maybe... maybe you should go to Madam Pomphrey after dinner," Hermione suggested, pushing away her own desert as her appetite disappeared in the face of Harry's. "I'm worried that something... well to be blunt about it, I'm worried that somebody cursed you."

Harry looked up and swallowed what he had without putting in anymore. "Just because I happen to be a little bit hungrier than normal?" he asked after wiping his mouth. He took another drink before saying anything more, but then after swallowing said to her, "Look, Hermione, I honestly have no clue where my glasses are. I lost them earlier today. And for everyone's information, actually no I don't need them any longer. I can't explain why. I look around and I'm actually seeing _better_ than I ever did with my glasses. In fact, the only thing I'm even remotely worried about right now? Is what Malfoy is up to."

Hermione bit her lip and struggled not to roll her eyes. Ron had no such compulsions.

"Oh come off it mate," Ron griped after a rather loud belch. "Much as I hate Malfoy and would love to stick it to him, there's no way he's a Marked Death Eater on some secret mission for You-Know-Who!"

"And since when do Death Eaters care about age limits?" Harry argued, finishing his platter with surprising speed. He didn't get anything else after he'd finished.

"By the way, Harry, when are you going to order a new book for Potions?" Hermione questioned, thinking a change of subject was in order.

Unfortunately, she'd chosen the wrong subject. Harry let out a heavy sigh that might've sounded a bit like a soft growl, and crossed his arms defensively.

"When I have the time. After Quidditch trials are over. There's nothing wrong with that book, Hermione!" he argued, pretty much picking up where they'd left off.

"It's cheating!" she resumed her own stance.

"So some bloke doodled in his text book. Wouldn't be the first one. And just because he was smart enough to jot down some notes and corrections on one or two things doesn't make him a cheater. Nor me, for that matter!"

"I never said you were a cheater, which is why you should give it back and ask for another one!"

"It's only a second-hand book, nothing wrong with second-hand books!"

"It's not...!"

"Uh, guys?" Ron interrupted.

"What?" they both turned and snapped at their friend.

"Just drop it all right! Anyway, how did your first lesson with Dumbledore go?" he changed the subject to something he hoped would be more agreeable.

Harry frowned and let out a frustrated sigh. He then noticed the table was mostly cleared away by now. "Fine, but not here," he said and got up, leading them out of the Great Hall.

They went outside to avoid any wandering eyes, where normally Harry might have taken them up to the Gryffindor Common Room or someplace else more familiar, for some reason he felt... uncomfortable in the castle. Like he was being constantly watched. Once they were outside, he took them to a walkway off the side of the courtyard and he finally relaxed as he felt they were hidden enough now. He then told them, in detail, everything that had been part of Dumbledore's lesson. They were both just as outraged as he was, but Hermione quickly turned to the information itself and what it could mean.

"So, no cool spells, or new magic, or anything like that?" said Ron, disappointed.

Harry shook his head and said, "No. Nothing like that at all. I can probably expect all the other lessons to be the same too."

"Information about Voldemort's past?" clarified Hermione.

He nodded and agreed, "Most likely. But while not what we had in mind, this probably is just as useful. What is that old saying, Hermione? Know your enemy?"

Hermione nodded in acknowledgment and then quoted to the, "Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know not thy enemy nor yourself, wallow in defeat every time. Sun Tzu."

"What does that mean?" Ron asked.

Harry held up his hand before Hermione could even try and then answered his friend, "How do you win in Quidditch Ron? Or chess?"

"Simple," the redhead shrugged, like it was obvious, "Strategy."

"What's strategy?" he was then asked.

"Well, it's planning out what to do at each stage of the game. Anticipating what your opponent is going to do, what moves you'll make, and what moves he'll make in response to your moves. Stuff like that," said Ron with a self-appreciating smile.

"So, how do you know what moves the other guy makes?" Harry pointed out.

"Oh well..." Ron's expression froze as the wheels started to turn. "Oh."

"I think he gets it," Harry grinned at his other best friend. She laughed silently and shook her head at the sheer absurdity of the entire conversation.

"Anyway, it's late, we should be getting back before curfew," Harry suddenly told them and then waited for them to lead the way. Once they were far enough away, he turned back, just for a second and looked down at his hands.

He had only just noticed whilst talking with them, but didn't dare do anything about it where they would see. The utensils he'd been using at dinner were stuck there to his wrists, and as he pulled them off, he couldn't help noticing they were absolutely covered in webs. Pulling them off him, he shook them free and left them where they fell and then turned to catch up. Whenever Ron and Hermione weren't looking, he was inspecting his wrists on all sides. He found both exactly what he'd feared and more than he'd expected.

He quickly hid his hands behind his back and covered his wrists with his sleeves as much as he could when he sensed that oppressive sense of being watched fall back over him. Once they were back in Gryffindor Tower, he risked it and took another look at his wrists. Sure enough, they were still here.

He didn't even know what they were, and yet he did at the same time. Instinctively, he knew they were special glands that would produce the same substance that could be made into webs. As in spider webs. And yet, looking at them, he had no idea how he knew that.

For starters, they looked like scars on his skin. Scars that just so happened to be shaped in web-like patterns, and that had sort of a—a flap of skin over it and when that flap was pulled back, as he found out the messy way, the fluid/webbing being held back by it was released all at once like some kind of spray. Thankfully he discovered that just moving his hand about and even making a fist wouldn't cause the flap to come open. But he did discover that there was a way that he could hold his hand and flex the muscles in his hand, wrist and arm that could pull the flap back, but not all the way. So it was more like a nozzle for the webbing that way.

In the privacy of his canopy bed, he discovered that thanks to those instinctual memories Aragog had talked about he could adjust whether the web shot out as a straight line, or as sort of a fully made web that could act like a net he supposed. Unfortunately, there were about a hundred other webbing techniques that Aragog had 'given' to him that he had no clue how to use. The web-line and web-net seemed to be all he could do with just him it would seem.

_**END** Part 1 of 6_


	2. Issue Two of Six

Harry went to sleep long after the others in his dorm were adrift in the arms of Morpheus. First off, he had to get rid of all the evidence of him experimenting with his new web powers, and then he spent some time trying to find something, and then using it to wrap up his wrists. He'd come up with some explanation for why he was wearing wristbands later, he was sure.

In the mean time, when he finally did drift off to sleep, he expected at least a few nightmares. Maybe even a continuation of that dream when he'd been cocooned amongst the unicorns, but in the end his actual dreams were far more disturbing.

He dreamed about Voldemort. Only, it wasn't any of his past encounters with Voldemort, nor was it some kind of horrible night-terror based on his anxiety. It was just Voldemort having a meeting with his Death Eaters in Malfoy Manor. They were talking about, of all things, financing!

According to the dream, it turns out that with Malfoy imprisoned, along with everyone else captured during the Department of Mysteries fiasco, Voldemort's organization had less capital than it could stand to lose. So apparently they were making plans on another Azkaban raid, but they were having trouble making the necessary bribes. Voldemort then turned the entire conversation around and had the people they were trying to bribe, and their families, brought to him, alive. He then, one by one, killed the spouse or middle child of the soon-to-be-traitor, straight off without even giving them the opportunity to capitulate beforehand.

By the time Harry awoke in the morning, he knew, without knowing how he knew, that there would soon be another Azkaban breakout. It was odd, he reflected as he got ready for the school day, but his dreams for the night were like what his visions of Voldemort had been, only not from Voldemort's perspective and without the pain from his scar. No, it was more like he was seeing it all from some outside perspective. He couldn't explain it, and since he'd awoken from the cocoon amongst the unicorns, his scar hadn't so much as twitched at him.

Looking at it in the mirror, Harry was surprised to see that his scar was as clear as he'd ever seen it. Like it was finally starting to heal. Thankfully it was still in the distinctive lightning bolt shape, just with an extra jagged edge to it. He'd been worried that it would have changed entirely after what Aragog had done to him.

It being a Monday, Harry had classes, and thanks to Sixth and Seventh Years having a more—focused work load, every day was now filled with complete classes, except for Wednesdays and Fridays, which still had Double Transfiguration and Double Potions coupled with Double Charms and Double Herbology respectively. Unfortunately that still meant that Harry had to deal with Snape and his version of a Defense Against The Dark Arts class.

He made it through, barely. He was reminded by Snape, repeatedly, that he had detention with him this coming weekend, but Harry had other things on his mind at the time so he didn't let it bother him. Considering those other things were his new powers pretty much going out of control, he had enough bothering him as it was!

Harry, for as long as he was in the public areas of the castle, felt an overwhelming sense of being watched just hover over him constantly. When in Defense class, he constantly felt like he was about to be attacked, but thankfully it never came. After Lunch, he and Malfoy had an... incident. Not like they used to have, more that they just happened to be in the same hallway at the same time with their separate groups of friends around them. Malfoy greeted Harry the way he usually did, Harry returned with the same. Ron said something, Hermione warned/argued with him not to, and then Pansy Parkinson walked by with Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davies and made a comment or two. Things quickly dissolved from there and before any of them knew it, wands were in hand and spells were flying.

Harry expertly dodged all the spells and even pushed his friends away so they wouldn't be hit either. He then, moving entirely on instinct, went up and punched Malfoy in the chest while doing a split-kick that sent the bookends (Crabbe and Goyle) into the walls. Malfoy himself went flying back and just before he did, there had been a distinctive *snap* sound. When he didn't get up, Harry just stared in disbelief, as did everyone else around.

'_I didn't even punch him that hard..._' Harry thought to himself as Ron and Hermione dragged him away from the scene, Ginny and Neville helping them through the crowd.

After that, there had been another incident just before dinner, when Harry had been musing over what to do with his situation in his dorm room. Given that classes were over for the day, he'd taken off his uniform, as well as his socks and shoes. He was so preoccupied with his inner musings that he didn't even notice that he was pacing not just around the room, but up the walls and across the ceiling as well!

He didn't even notice until Ron came up to the room to get him, but thankfully turned back at the last second, the last second where he dropped from the ceiling to the floor with an acrobatic flip that would make every star gymnast for the past decade green with envy, landing solidly on his feet without so much as a sprain. Ron never noticed a thing.

There were another dozen or so incidents that all culminated in one burning fact. He needed to learn how to control his powers, and sooner rather than later!

Therefore, at night he trained. Well, he called it training but it may as well have been playing. He waited until Ron's snores were at their loudest, and then without letting anybody hear him, he crawled out the window and spent a good hour or two jumping and swinging and going pretty much anywhere he damn well pleased throughout and around the castle. He discovered what the web strings could be used for, and it didn't take him long to get the hang of swinging between the towers. More than once he had his face planted against the stone walls, but pretty soon he learned how to go with his instincts and after a few nights he was swinging through the towers and hallways like he'd been born to it.

Unfortunately, while he knew it was possible to do more with the web fluid he produced and could shoot out, all he could do with it was use the web lines and web nets. Maybe Aragog was right and it wasn't possible for a human body to do the same things the Acromantula could with theirs. Didn't mean he wouldn't stop trying though.

In the meantime, he also learned just how far and how high he could jump, as well as how good his reflexes were and that he was considerably tougher than before. He fell from a great height more than once, and it was high enough that he worried about being nothing but a red paste on the ground, but somehow he wasn't and he was sure he broke more than a few bones, and yet by morning he was fine save for some bruising and tenderness, which was gone by Lunch time.

As for his strength, well, he didn't have an accurate measure, but he would say it was accurate enough that he had the same ratio of strength that an Acromantula had, but in a human body. He had trouble finding anything that wasn't secured down via some means that he _couldn't_ pick up and throw at least ten feet or more. The more impressive part of that was how much control he had over it. For a bit there, he was worried that he'd be strong all the time and things would just break in his hands and he wouldn't be able to touch anybody for fear of sending them flying. Turned out he didn't have to worry. He seemed to know how to hold himself back so he didn't break things or hurt people, and he even tested it a couple times to see that even in a stressful situation, such as the middle of a fight (wasn't hard to get Malfoy to attack him again, this time with a larger group and him just by himself) and he could still hold himself back so he used a good amount of strength without going overboard and outright killing someone by mistake.

The real surprises were his new-found speed and agility. Harry had always had to be light on his feet, from a young age, dodging his obese cousin and his bully friends had been a regular part of his childhood. Now, well now he didn't even have to try. He could move and do acrobatic maneuvers he'd only seen on the Olympics, and other things he tried he knew should have been impossible, but to him they were as easy as anything he could do on a broom. Easier even!

And then there was his wall-crawling abilities.

It only worked when it was his skin against whatever surface he was sticking to, with only very thin material being the exception. Even his cotton and wool socks were too thick it seemed, so he'd have to go barefoot. However, he did remember being able to crawl while wearing the Acromantula silk suit he'd made, and apparently the boots, made entirely out of spider silk, were thin enough to work.

He could actually crawl on the ceiling, and once, just to see that he still could, he stood up on the ceiling and hung there like he was standing on the ground. He barely even felt the pull of gravity, and the whole blood-rushing-to-his-head sensation he normally got when inverted like this was oddly absent. It wasn't like gravity wasn't affecting him, it was more like his body's internal processes were just ignoring or not doing what they usually did when in that particular position as it used to.

On top of all that, he discovered that it wasn't just his hands and feet that he could stick to. He could pretty much make any part of his body that he wanted to adhesive to an untold degree. He found this out the one night he went out training shirtless, it was a hot night, and managed to stay stuck to a ceiling by his back in order to avoid Filch detecting him. His hands and feet couldn't find proper purchase in time, so he'd just pushed himself against the next surface he could and when both his limbs failed him next, he was amazed to discover that he wasn't falling on his face, instead staying right where he'd put himself.

A little bit of experimentation confirmed that it was _any_ part of his skin. And it wasn't just for sticking to walls either. Anything he could use his increased strength to lift or carry, he could stick it to his skin and leave it there until it got too bothersome. He suspected that at least part of why he was so strong was because of this ability to give him some extra leverage by sticking to whatever he was picking up and carrying. He was a bit in awe of himself at some points.

Also, no matter what he was doing, flipping, jumping, standing on the ceiling or the walls, whatever he did he always knew where his body was in its position to his surroundings. Sure, he might get distracted, or not entirely listen to that sense of his surroundings he had, usually resulting in him getting hurt or falling, but he could usually get himself out of it with a few well-timed twists or reaching out a hand or foot at the right moment. As he gained more and more experience, he began to fall less and less and slowly got better and better. By the weekend, he was good enough that he could web-swing his way across the castle in less than a minute without hitting the ground once. Hitting walls on the other hand...

Well, it was a work in progress.

On Saturday, he put off any thoughts of training, as he had an entirely different training to get underway. Quidditch tryouts started that Saturday. Being the newly appointed Team Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, while nice on paper, wasn't living up to what he'd expected of it. He wondered how Oliver and Angelina had ever managed. From the applicants alone, he knew that just the tryouts alone would take all morning, and perhaps may even cut into Lunch. On top of that, he had detention with Snape that night.

At least his new copy of Advanced Potion-Making had arrived with the morning post. It got Hermione off his back about the Half-Blood Prince's book... for about thirty seconds until he revealed his rather ingenious plan to simply switch out the covers. More good news was that nobody died recently according to the Daily Prophet, but Dementor attacks were up. Unfortunately, it also looked like Hogwarts attendance was going to be down this year as there were rumors flying about parents pulling their kids out of school.

Focusing himself back on the present, rather than things he had no control over, Harry lead the way down to the Quidditch Pitch at the appointed time for the Quidditch Team tryouts. Much to his surprise, it looked like half of Gryffindor House was out in force, while the rest were there entirely for support. He started it off simple, just to see if he could cut the numbers a bit, by having them all do a couple circuits of the stadium. Good thing too, as less than a quarter of those trying out could actually fly at all.

Once that was determined, he then started the individual tryouts for the different positions. He'd be keeping his Seeker spot, but knowing what had happened last year and how many times he tended to get injured, he still held the tryout in hopes of finding a protege, someone to step in if he couldn't make it. Unfortunately, the pickings were rather slim in that regard. So he decided to go with what worked and designated Ginny as back-up Seeker and kept a couple of the Chaser-hopefuls as reservists.

In the end, he was left with Ron as Keeper, thanks to some cunning curse work by Hermione, Katie Bell, Ginny Weasley and Demelza Robins as Chasers, Jimmy Peakes and Ritchie Coote as Beaters, and of course himself as Seeker.

After Quidditch, the trio headed over to Hagrid's hut to see if they could find and talk to their friend. At first it didn't seem like he was home, but Buckbeak was there. Hagrid walked up on them as they were greeting the Hippogriff.

There was a bit of an argument between him and Hagrid, but nothing that wasn't resolved in just a minute or so. Sadly, Hagrid was the bearer of news Harry was all to aware of. Aragog was sick and was dying. Hagrid was trying to take care of him, like any person would a pet or something else they cared about of course. Harry immediately felt a surge of overwhelming guilt as he knew something that Hagrid didn't about Aragog, and likewise knew that he couldn't tell him. Not without revealing what it was Aragog had done.

After they left Hagrid, Harry found himself facing a rather bleak prospect in his detention with Snape for the evening. Didn't help that people kept coming up to him and talking his ear off when he just wanted to get to the table and eat his dinner. Amidst everything else going on, Harry also noticed that the omnipresent sense of being watched only seemed to hover over him when he was in the actual castle, and it got more intense whenever there were portraits around.

But why would his senses be triggered by something like that?

It was probably nothing, he hoped, and decided to just ignore it for now.

Detention, as expected, was a lesson in horror and disgust, sorting Flobberworms for potions. They were all dead, but there was a certain level of dead at which they were no longer good for use in various potions. After he was finally released, he felt like scrubbing his hands until they bled, but in all honesty it wasn't as bad as it was made out to be. Besides, against Snape's "advice", he did bring protective gloves and used them to every advantage.

After detention was over and done with, he considered going back to the Gryffindor Common Room, but he didn't feel like dealing with the usual insanity and drama, especially given that a lot of the Quidditch Hopefuls he'd had to turn away would no doubt be there trying to beg him for a second chance. He really was not looking forward to that. So, walking out the nearest door to the outside, whether it be balcony, walkway, or courtyard he didn't care, he just wanted to be outside. The moment he was free of the oppressive atmosphere of the castle, he shot his left hand out and pulled the skin on his wrist just so and a web line shot out and stuck high on the monolithic structure.

Harry pulled the line tight and jumped as high as he could. His robes flapped noisily around him and he could feel them dragging on him. He'd felt dragged down and ragged on for most of the day as it was. He swung his way over to the outside of Gryffindor Tower and hung from the side by the palm of one hand, while the other pulled his shoes and socks off.

Once his feet were uncovered, he stood perpendicular to the Tower and shot out a small web net, which he quickly fashioned into a simple bag that he could hold his socks and shoes in until he was back in his dorm. That taken care of, he then focused on climbing/wall-crawling his way up to his dorm window. He'd gone in and out of it so many times now that he didn't need to check every window anymore.

Thankfully, nobody was in there, probably still down in the Common Room he figured. He slipped in the unlocked window quickly and quietly. He'd permanently disabled the lock, and also transfigured a nifty latch on the outside so he wouldn't ever be locked out when he really needed to get in from the outside. He pulled his shoes out of his web bag and tossed them by his trunk. He then arranged things on his bed like he did every night he went out training, making it look to the others, when they came in, like he'd already gone to bed and was fast asleep. He even put a Silencing charm on his curtains to make it clear 'he' wouldn't be disturbed.

Preparations complete, he pulled out something that he'd hidden with no clear intention of ever pulling out again. The Acromantula silk suit, complete with gloves, boots and hood. He then took off all his clothes and put on a fresh pair of boxers before donning the costume once again. It felt as fresh as the day he'd first made it. One of the unique properties of Acromantula silk and why it was so valued as clothing material. Pulling the hood on, he was amazed yet again at how easily he could see through it. He was even more amazed at how well he could see period!

Jumping to the window, he crawled out of it and closed it back before so much as a paper rustled from his departure. Outside now, he shot out a web line on pure instinct and pulled himself along it, zipping across the distance between towers, and then shooting out another line and swinging higher into the air and from there he was soon swinging amongst Hogwart's spires like a monkey in the jungle.

Pretty soon though, he got bored with that. He'd swung these spires and this area so much that he knew practically every nook and cranny of them! He wanted to get out, stretch his legs so to speak, and just relax for once in his life!

With that in mind, he swung over to the parapets nearest the Forbidden Forest. He then jumped over to the wall between them and shot out two web lines, one from each wrist. Holding tight to the lines, he began to walk backwards and then over the side of the wall, all while holding extra tight to the web lines, which were beginning to stretch and as he knew was a very elastic substance.

"Really hope this works," he muttered to himself beneath the faceless mask, and then he jumped away from the wall and let the tension in the lines draw him back forward at a considerable speed. He let go at the apex and was soon flying at an accelerated arch toward the forest. Soon enough he was amidst the trees and branches and was swinging, jumping and crawling along places he'd never been before. It was so exhilarating that he couldn't help himself and let out several very loud whoops and cheers of excitement.

He knew it was dangerous in the forest, especially with Aragog's children probably still out to get him, but he couldn't help himself, it was good to be out and flexing his wings so to speak. It was also the first true test he'd had of his developing skill, and he had to say he was pleased with the results so far. Normally, he'd gone out in his pajamas or just boxers, and this was the first time he'd gone out in the silk suit before. Not since that first day when he'd actually gotten his powers in all honesty.

It was, in a word, amazing! It felt like he was wrapped up in a familiar blanket, one that fit perfectly and was completely comfortable and made him feel confident and himself all at once. Which was strange in itself since he was pretty much going around in something that may as well be a body stocking with how tightly it fit to his body, and at times, with the wind rushing by him in a swing or free fall it sometimes felt like he wasn't wearing so much as a fiber of clothing.

He swung his way over to where Hagrid used to keep his brother Grawp tied up. The younger giant was gone now, learning more how to behave and set up with his own place just outside of Hogwarts grounds like Hagrid had. An arrow was flying at his head.

He swung up to a branch and twisted his body appropriately so that the arrow flew past his nose without so much as scratching the fabric of his suit. "Huh, Hippogriff feathers?" he commented as it passed by his eyes. He landed on the branch and spun around to face the one that had shot at him. No surprise, it was his old friend Bane from the centaurs herd. The one that hated everything human, wizard or otherwise.

"Hey! What did I ever do to you?" he shouted down at the angry centaur.

"Trespasser!" Bane shouted in reply, notching another arrow to his bow.

"Just passing through, I swear!" Harry held up his hands innocently. "No trespassing going on here, really! Whoa! Hey, I—whoa!" Bane had shot another arrow at him, which he'd dodged, but then he kept firing and Harry had to keep dodging.

Finally he had enough and back-flipped off the branch, away from the arrows, and shot a web line to the same branch and swung up and away from the dangerous centaur. Only for the arrows to follow. He shot out another line and swung deeper into the forest, and was soon out of the range of Bane's arrows. Unfortunately, his narrow escape had just put him neck deep into Acromantula territory, as judged by all the webbing that he had _not_ made himself hanging from the trees.

"Uh, my new Unicorn-given Danger Sense is telling me I should probably be getting out of here," he said to himself, deciding he'd stretched his legs enough and now it was time to get back to the castle. He jumped from branch to branch, being mindful of everything around him. And then the worst possible thing that could possibly happen, of course, happened.

"_Where do you think you are going, freak?_" Gargrog (and he wasn't even going to hazard a guess as to how he was able to recognize the Acromantula in the first place) snarled at him from the next tree over.

Unfortunately, he wasn't alone. From the looks of it, half the colony was there in force, none of them smaller than a man, and most of them considerably larger than that. They had placed themselves between him and pretty much every way out, save for the path that would take them deeper into their den. If Harry wanted to get out of here at all, he'd have to get past them, and those prospects were not looking good.

There was also the fact that they called him freak, which just made it all the more enjoyable to go through them, the hard way.

_**END** Part 2 of 6_


	3. Issue Three of Six

"What is this about Gargrog?" Harry shouted at the Acromantula that was straight across from him. "Aragog told me that it's impossible for the Mark to be taken from me. Though, if this is about the suit, well I suppose some thanks are in order, so... thanks?"

There was some hissing from who he was sure were the same thirteen that had cocooned him when the unicorns had come to rescue him. He rapidly dodged some web shots coming his way, dancing along the branch and managing to avoid every last one of them.

"Whoa! Look, if it's really that big a deal, I can pay you for the suit! How's about five knuts?" he called out. Briefly, he wondered where this new snark remarking version of him was coming from.

"_We don't want your stinking gold freak! We want what you stole from us! What was rightfully ours!_" Gargrog shouted back at him, while he continued to dodge web shots from the shooting gallery.

"I didn't steal it! For crying out loud, STOP SHOOTING AT ME!" Harry screamed and reacted on instinct, rolling his wrists to pull back the glands to shoot some web nets, only something unexpected happened. The webbing clogged up inside the gloves of his suit and as he rolled his wrist some more, the clog was suddenly forced out from where sleeve met glove and instead of a really big web net or a web line, a marble sized pellet of webbing shot out faster than he'd expected and... it was only after it hit the Acromantula he'd been pointing at that he realized he'd just unleashed his own web shot.

"Uh, OK, unexpected, and previously thought impossible, but definitely OK!" Harry said to himself, looking down at his wrists and trying to figure out how it was he'd just done a web trick that up until now he'd thought impossible. Only Acromantula with their unique bodies and web glands could shoot off web shots like that... right?

"But not complaining either!" he hastily added as he started to shoot out web shots toward all those still shooting back at him. Some of them successfully dodged, others he just plain missed, but the few he did manage to hit, were hit by sufficient force that it actually knocked them off their branches and to the forest floor.

Gargrog hissed and spit a bit and after a moment to tense, he jumped up and across the way intent on landing right on top of Harry and taking him out up close and personal. Harry, distracted as he was by shooting all the spiders around him, didn't see him coming. And yet, only a few moments before Gargrog would have impacted right on top of him, his Danger Sense screamed at him and he immediately stopped shooting web shots and instead shot a web line to the next tree over and the moment he felt it connect, rather than jump and swing, he used his considerable strength to zip himself across the distance, landing where he'd shot his line to mere moments before the Acromantula would have killed him.

"_GRROARRR_!" the giant spider roared out his frustration.

"Well you didn't expect me to just stand there and let you hit me, did you?" he called back.

"_Actually, yes!_" the Acromantula currently occupying the tree he'd zipped to said in reply and immediately started trying to hit him with it's forelegs and bite him with its dripping fangs.

"Uh, yeah, not going to happen," he commented while dodging the leg strikes and backing further down the tree trunk to get away from the fangs. "And by the way, are you drooling?" His only reply was an angry hiss.

"_Hold! Still! You! Little! Freak!_" the as-yet-unnamed Acromantula growled at him, swinging and swiping at him with it's talon-tipped legs.

Harry's eyes narrowed in anger, and rather than back further down the trunk, he dodged upwards instead, diving in under the large spider's belly and skittering up the tree until he was on the other side of it. "You know," he said with a strong hint of anger at the spider as he 'stood' above it on the tree, "I _really_ hate being called a freak!" He then jumped down and lashed out with a spinning high kick that delivered sufficient force to knock the arachnid from the tree and send it crashing to the forest floor.

Web zipping back up to the higher branches, Harry soon found himself facing two more Acromantula. Both had the higher 'ground' as it were and used their webs as much as their legs and venom-dripping fangs. More worried about those fangs than anything else, he could only duck and weave so much before they started landing the occasional blow. Thankfully, he was made of sterner stuff these days so while they threatened to knock him off the tree, they didn't hurt or do as much damage as he'd feared. Then they landed a lucky shot and his right wrist was pinned to one of the sturdier branches of the tree by a web shot.

"Argh! No!" he shouted, struggling against the webbing while still dodging as much as he was able.

"_Hahaha! Can't run and hide anymore, freak! And no unicorn herd to come and save you!_" one of them mocked. They both started firing their webbing trying to pin his remaining extremities. It was like trying to play twister where they call every hand and foot _but_ your right hand!

"Stop calling me freak!" Harry shouted, his anger getting the best of him and getting himself the necessary leverage, and pulled as hard as he possibly could to free his hand from the webbing. "Rrraaahhh!"

To everyone's surprise, his arm came free with a wrenching sound that were like bones breaking, but when Harry looked, neither his arm nor the webbing had been torn free. The tree branch on the other hand had snapped completely and Harry found himself waving around a four foot log with sharp splinters on either end. The Acromantula nearest hissed at him and tried to skewer him with a talon-tipped foreleg. Harry automatically swung the branch and for the first time that night successfully blocked the strike.

Harry took a moment to examine his new weapon and couldn't resist commenting, "Nice! I can work with this!" And suddenly things took a different turn for the young hero.

"_It won't help you fre—urk!_" the spider hissed, but was interrupted rather abruptly when Harry finally retaliated and went on the attack for the first time since running into them. He swiped his weapon around in a heavy arc, knocking the Acromantula off-balance by pushing the legs out from under it, and then he jabbed with the splintered end and as it reared back to keep from being impaled, he slid in faster than it expected and rapid-punched it in the torso a half dozen times with his fist, the last of which was a stronger blow than the others, actually knocking the giant spider from the tree and all the way to the forest floor.

Harry ducked when his Danger Sense buzzed him and raised his weapon in defense, narrowly escaping being bit by the other Acromantula's venom-dripping fangs. He lost some chips from the log, but it was still mostly intact, so he quickly pulled back on it and then jumped to a higher branch, flipping over the larger creature and then landing on it's back where it could not reach.

Rather than impale and kill it with his weapon, he punched it with his fist right between it's beady red eyes and dazed it. He then shot a couple of web shots and a larger than normal web net over it and used the tree branch on his arm to knock it off while using his own webbing to hang it from the tree they were in, wrapped up in his own web-cocoon. He looked up and around the clearing, going to the edge of the highest branch of the tree he was on and then shouted to all the rest, "Next!"

"_Don't get cocky wizard!_" Gargrog growled, approaching via his own web swing. "_We are many and you are just one. We only have to get lucky once, while you have to be lucky every single time. The odds are against you._"

"Never tell me the odds," he quoted, and then quipped, "Cause I usually tend to make them cry and squeal and go 'wah wah wah' all the way home. Oh, wait, that's the Big Bad Wolf. Sorry, what were we talking about? I kind of—" Harry suddenly found himself dodging backwards on the branch and then web zipping over to another tree as Gargrog and three others converged on him. "Wow, someone's not a fan of fairy tales."

"_Do you EVER stop talking_?" one of the other spiders shouted at him.

"Yeah, actually," Harry responded, zipping to another tree and then taking a chance and swinging clear across the clearing, hopefully in the direction of the school he hoped. "Only you'd have something to really worry about then, cause it's when I stop talking and just start doing that you know I've gotten mad. You wouldn't like me when I'm mad."

"_Well too bad for you, but we're ALL mad! You stole from us what was rightfully ours! And we're going to take it back by whatever means necessary!_" they were shouting at him from the shadows.

One of the smaller, and definitely faster Acromantula swung out to meet Harry in mid-air, all it's legs reaching out to grab him off his web line. He swung the tree branch on his wrist forward, adding to the speed of his swing, and blurring the edges of his vision like when he went into a dive on his broom. It allowed him to slam the makeshift weapon on his arm into the swinging spider and pretty much knock it for a loop while removing it from it's own web line. He flipped mid-air after it started it's fall and then shot out another line and swung further away, this time pumping his legs and swinging the weighted tree branch to get him some altitude to take him above the canopy. Once there over the treetops, it was easy to spot the school and identify which direction he needed to go in.

Zipping back down to the trees below, he started making his way through the trees back towards safety. Web swinging where he could, but when he couldn't, running and jumping through the trees and forest like he had the day he'd first gotten his powers.

"_You won't escape us wizard! You may have the Mark, but that doesn't make you an Acromantula! We will catch you!_" their voices echoed through the forest behind him.

"Yeah, I don't think so!" he shouted back without pausing. "And maybe I'm some kind of _Wizard-Acromantula_, huh? Every consider that?"

"_FREAK!_" several angry hisses shouted back at him.

At that, Harry frowned beneath his hood and considered several options. That's when he spotted a rather large rock lying there on the forest floor. Thankfully it wasn't half-buried, but to do what he wanted with it, he would definitely need to not be in mid-air. He landed solidly against the trunk of the tree closest to it and shot out a couple web lines and then grabbed the lines and pulled as hard as he could. It wasn't as hard as he'd expected, because the boulder-sized rock came up like he would pick up a regular sized rock. Even better, when he swung it around and then over his head at the chasing spiders, it moved through the air like it was made of wood or paper practically. However, when it crashed, actually smashing several Acromantula in it's path, it was all too heavy for them.

"Stop calling me freak! Basilisk-fodder!" to add injury to insult, he finally tore apart the webbing binding his hand to the log and then kicked the log right into the face of the nearest swinging spider, knocking it to the ground. He then quickly resumed the race back to the castle, this time able to use both his arms to shoot out web lines, soon doubling his speed from before.

Unfortunately, his pursuers were not only keeping up, some of the more tenacious of their lot were starting to catch up. The way this was going, he realized, he'd wind up taking a bunch of enraged Acromantula right to the school's doorstep. At a time of night when everybody was sleeping and not so much as a single soul even suspected of what was headed their way. His plan changed just like that, knowing he couldn't allow them to follow him all the way back to the school. He either needed to take them out, or convince them to leave off before they even got close.

Thus, the question became how to do that?

He headed toward the mountains. Ten big trees later, he realized after the fact that he'd just lead the Acromantula into the heart of Centaur territory.

"WHHAAAHOOOHHH!" he cried out as he fell, his web line having been cut by a well-aimed arrow. Unfortunately, more arrows shot out the moment he tried to shoot out another line to break his fall, and it was getting harder to dodge mid-air but they weren't letting him do much about it. He wound up crashing, rather ungracefully into a thicket of bushes, rolling with the impact until he lay on the forest floor in as much physical pain as he could ever remember being in.

"You _dare_?" Bane screamed down at him.

Harry didn't even bother looking up, just trying to keep himself breathing was a chore in and of itself.

"Bane! Ignore the human for now! The spiders are coming!" another of the centaurs screamed at the angry warhorse of a centaur.

"Tsch!" Bane snorted and then readjusted his aim. "This is your fault, human. Bringing these monsters straight to us. It seems Aragog finally tired of us holding his spider's in check.

Groaning, Harry slowly, trembling, got to his feet.

"Aragog had nothing to do with it," Harry told the centaur. "He's dying. These are his kids, trying to kill me so they can take the Mark of the Acromantula away from me."

"WHAT?" half the herd screamed at him suddenly.

Harry's Danger Sense was going crazy all of a sudden and he knew precisely what from. He tackled Bane and quickly threw him to the side, shouting, "DOWN!"

Harry barely had enough time to dodge to the side himself, let alone wonder just how strong he was to casually toss a thousand pound magical creature to the side like he barely weighed one hundred pounds, as the web net swept through where they'd just been standing, soon to be followed by the Acromantula who'd fired it.

"Leave them alone Gargrog! They have nothing to do with this!" Harry shouted as he recognized his assailant.

"_Then you shouldn't have run to them for cover, freak!_" he hissed back, rearing to strike with his talons.

Harry leaped over the strike, kicked at the offending leg and used it as a spring board to get a bit more height as he then spun around in a flip, his own leg fully extended and slammed a solid blow to the giant spider, right between the eyes. Somehow, Harry was sensing where the most vulnerable parts on his foes were and his body reacted to that knowledge like he'd been fighting them for years!

With the larger creature stunned, Harry took the opportunity to land a few more debilitating blows, some to the joints, some to the mandibles, and a couple more to the thorax, before finishing up with another flip-kick that actually sent the several-ton-sized spider flying back up into the trees. Unfortunately, he noticed in the brief reprieve he had, he was the only one doing so well against the sudden menace.

Fortunately... er, somewhat fortunately depending on your point of view, the Acromantula were only out to kill him, not the centaurs. So when the giant spiders subdued and overcame their assailants, they cocooned them much as they had him when he'd initially ran from them, leaving them alive, but still clearly in trouble and in no way able to fight them any further. Harry dove for the first bound centaur he came across and after knocking the spider from it, ripped the webbing apart as easily as he had when emerging from his own cocoon.

"Look," Harry said while tearing apart the few remaining webs from the centaur's body, "I'm really sorry about this. I didn't know what else to do, and I certainly didn't mean to get you all involved in my fight here!"

Harry caught sight of another centaur being taken down, but he was too far away to do much. Or was he? He lashed out with his webbing, shooting two web lines that caught the Acromantula by the thorax. He planted his feet and pulled with all his strength. To his immense surprise and relief, the giant spider was picked up into the air and went flying. He briefly adjusted the spider's flight path with a couple of tugs and another good swing, making it so that it crashed into another spider and they both tumbled back into the dark forest.

"Thank you, Harry Potter," the centaur said with genuine gratitude. It took Harry only a glance to recognize him as Firenze, the first centaur he'd ever actually met.

"Professor Firenze?" Harry was surprised to see the centaur here, seeing as the last he'd heard the kind centaur had been kicked out of the herd, and was supposed to be teaching part-time Divination opposite Professor Trelawney.

"Explanations can wait, for now Mister Potter," the centaur smirked and then reared back before charging forward. "Explanations I fully intend to hear about what you are doing out after curfew!"

Harry grinned beneath his hood and shook his head. After that, things got a bit too hectic to worry about much else. There were over two dozen Acromantula in the clearing fighting twice that many centaur archers and Harry. And the centaurs were losing.

Harry zipped from fight to fight, attacking the giant spiders in their weak spots, then knocking them away, sometimes tied up with his own webbing. The centaurs, when they could, shot their arrows with pinpoint accuracy, blinding and sometimes paralyzing and killing their attackers, but far more often the spiders were just too quick and closed the distance before the centaurs could fire their long-range weapons. He did what he could though, tripping the dark creatures up with webbing and trip lines and even throwing rocks and fallen tree branches at them.

Unfortunately, the way it was going right now, it looked like neither group would stop until the other was dead or on the run, and the centaurs were not going to run. And the Acromantula...

Harry sighed and made a very hard decision. Because the Acromantula were going to stay as long as he stayed and they wouldn't run, unless he ran first, and then they'd be hunting him all over again. The only other recourse was to kill all of the Acromantula, and Harry knew that was the last thing Aragog wanted.

"I'm sorry for bringing you into this, I really never intended for anyone to get hurt!" Harry shouted to Firenze, and then he shot a line up into the trees and swung up to the lowest available branch. "HEY GARGROG! YOU WANT ME? LET'S PLAY A LITTLE HIDE AND SEEK!"

Harry only hesitated for a few moments, enough to ensure all the Acromantula had turned towards him, and then he started making a beeline for the school once more. Immediately, all the Acromantula broke off their attacks on the centaurs, a couple here and there even ignoring the threat to the point that they were killed by centaur arrows as they all resumed chasing Harry through the Forbidden Forest.

He moved faster than he ever had before, zipping from tree to tree and jumping the distance when that wasn't fast enough rather than swinging. Right when he could see the school towers through the foliage, Harry dropped down to the ground and then ran back into the forest, keeping his jumps horizontal rather than vertical this time. The spiders swarmed the spot where he'd paused but hesitated after that as while they too could see the school, they could also just as clearly sense that Harry hadn't gone in that direction. No, instead, they found a new trail, on the ground, heading back into the forest, but towards the lake. They followed the trail to the lake rather than try and see if he'd actually headed up to the school.

When they reached the area where his trace went into the water, they all spread out and started searching the beach and even going back into the forest to make sure he hadn't slipped past them at some point. None of them could find another trace of him. And unfortunately for the Acromantula, spiders and water are notoriously known for not working well together. In particular giant spiders.

Gargrog was so angry, he was practically vibrating where he stood. The others made sure to stay well away from their elder sibling, not sure what he would do in these circumstances. They didn't want to be near him when he finally lost whatever level of control he had, that much they were sure of.

"_FREAK! I WILL GET YOU! YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED! I WILL TAKE BACK WHAT YOU STOLE FROM ME! DO YOU HEAR ME, FREAK!_" his voice echoed out over the turbulent waters of the Black Lake.

Harry gasped as he came to the surface, breathing heavily through his water-soaked hood as he swam the rest of the way to the underground dock where the First Years were usually docked on their first trip into Hogwarts. Staying in the water until he reached the back wall of the hidden dock, he tried to make as little noise as possible, hoping that he'd lead the Acromantula far enough away that even if they did get it in their heads to actually attack the school, it would be morning before they got there from where they were now.

Once he reached the back wall, he silently climbed until he got to the ceiling and from there he found the path that Hagrid lead the First Years up to the school where Professor McGonagall typically met them and then took them to the Great Hall. Rather than risk being seen, even in the darkness of the very early morning, Harry web zipped his way over to the shadow of the cliff and from there he crawled up the cliff face to the outside of the Great Hall. From there, he made his way to the owl entrance near the ceiling and once inside, it was simplicity itself to make his way to the Grand Staircase and web swing his way up to the seventh floor, not having to wait on the stairs to move themselves into position either.

Not willing to risk the Fat Lady, or any of the other portraits raising a fuss about him though, he stuck to the shadows and may as well have been invisible since the portraits only ever looked down or across and very rarely up at the ceiling. The main entrance to Gryffindor Tower cut off from him, Harry merely made his way to the nearest balcony and then went in the same way he'd gone out, through the window in the boys dormitory.

Thankfully it was still a couple hours from when they had to wake up, so at least he could get some sleep in. He quickly stripped off the suit and hid it away, dressing in his pajamas and falling into bed with a sigh of relief that left him even more exhausted than all the action from the night had given him. Still, busy night that it was, Harry couldn't help but feel more than a bit of satisfaction from seeing what all he could do now.

He'd just faced off against an enraged hoard of Acromantula, all of them wanting to kill him! And he'd not only escaped, he'd actually beat up a few of them! This definitely went right up there with the time that they'd won the Quidditch Cup in his Third Year!

Tired and exhausted, Harry drifted off into the arms of Morpheus, content for the first time in his life that he could now handle anything else the world had to throw at him.

_**END** Part 3 of 6_


	4. Issue Four of Six

Harry had had an epiphany the night he'd gone out and faced the Acromantula. Entirely by accident of course.

It turns out that all the extra knowledge Aragog had given him, all the skills that they'd both thought impossible for a human to do, weren't impossible at all. It was just that what an Acromantula could do with their legs, claws, talons, fangs, and even hair for all kinds of web tricks, it would take a human using various tools to do instead. And thus his epiphany.

While wearing the silk suit, the webbing had clogged in the sleeve, or so he'd thought at the time. It wasn't until he forced it out and snapped out his wrist that he discovered how to use what his instinctual knowledge told him was a web shot. And that was only the beginning.

To begin with, he tore up one of his old t-shirts, which was actually one of Dudley's old t-shirts before it was tossed to him when he was nine years old. It still fit him and it wasn't even a tight fit. Well, that had been before he tore it up into long strips of cotton to wrap around his wrists of course. When he tried to shoot out a web, much as it had with the silk suit, the web fluid clogged up, but it didn't build up in the same way. It still came out, but not as a web shot, more a mass string of still sticky fluid.

At first he was a bit discouraged, after all what could he do with just a bunch of web fluid that wasn't even a web line or a web net. Then one of those bits of instinctual knowledge tickled his brain and he looked at the mass of webbing anew. He shot out some more, but this time he moved his hands in a back and forth pattern. Almost before he knew it, he'd fashioned the sticky webs into something that approached the design of a circular shield. When he held it up and stretched it out, the silk suddenly hardened and he _was_ holding a shield made out of webs. And one made out of Acromantula silk to boot, making it resistant to most curses.

Wanting to see exactly how good a shield it was, Harry braced it solidly against the wall and then punched it dead center. The shield cracked a bit, but remained solid and wasn't bending. Curious, Harry saw another opportunity to test himself, to see just how strong he really was. Bracing himself, he clenched his fist tight and coiled his muscles and threw another punch, not holding back anymore. The shield shattered under the blow, and a web-shaped crack appeared in the stone wall that he'd put the shield in front of. Harry somehow knew that if he'd punched the wall without the shield there, it wouldn't just be cracked, it would have been pulverized.

"Bloody hell," Harry whispered, examining his fist. There wasn't even a bruise!

This required a bit more experimentation, he decided.

Now, every night after the castle had gone to sleep, instead of swinging between the towers, Harry made his way to various private spots here and there. The Astronomy Tower, the Room of Requirement (when it would open for him), and even the Quidditch Pitch and locker rooms. At three in the morning there wasn't anyone out and about that would really see him there.

Some nights he practiced with his new found webbing skills, others he experimented with various tools or ways of manipulating the web fluid as it came out of the glands on his arms. He found out that some materials, plant leaves for example, held over the glands as he released the fluid changed the properties of the webbing produced. The first such experiment he tried was with a maple leaf. The webbing that came out was stickier than normal. Like extremely sticky, to the point that not even with all his enhanced strength could he unstick himself from everything that it stuck to him. After about an hour though, it finally dissolved and shortly evaporated, freeing him up just in time to avoid being caught.

Other plants and other materials had different effects, some of them quite unexpected, but all of them very useful. Deciding to try his hand at some tinkering, Harry started gathering bits and bobs here, and then transfiguring them into what he needed. At first, he tried making reusable patches that he could just slap over the glands, but that got too complex and he had no place to keep all of them in the Acromantula Silk suit. Then, after one of his new team's Quidditch practices, he found himself taking off the armored gloves that were part of the standard Quidditch uniform and noticed how they fit perfectly over his forearms.

After a bit more transfiguration, he had himself a couple of wrist/armbands, the patches he'd made earlier easily fit into a carousel cartridge changer that he could easily adjust, even in the skintight silk suit and still be able to shoot out the modified webbing. It didn't even bulk up the suit any at all, just making his forearms look a bit bigger.

By the 29th of September, he'd completed the third version of what he was privately calling his "web shooters" and they were the best versions yet. First couple, he had to manually adjust the cartridge settings with either hand. Now, thanks to the curriculum focusing so much on silent spell casting, it had inspired Harry to find a way to make the cartridges auto-adjust as well as a way to make sure it was set to the one that he wanted, without having to use magic from his wand to make it change when he wanted it to change. It took a lot of work, but he'd finally made a web shooter that automatically adjusted what patch was in place simply by adjusting how he held his wrist. Holding his hands down and to the side, like he was holstering some kind of weapon released the catches holding the cartridges in place. Tiny little marks in the part of each cartridge that came flush against his skin let him know which cartridge was in place at the time. Rolling his hand back and up and then jerking it once reset the shooters back to 'default' with no patch against the glands so he could still use his standard web lines, web nets, and web shots.

His third version included what the second had not though, and that was a pressure-sensitive lock that needed to be held down before the cartridges would adjust at all. Harry honestly hadn't thought about how often he rolled his wrists around, but it was enough that there had been a few accidents that caught his attention and forced him to come up with a way to make sure it didn't happen any more. He put the 'lock sensors' in his palm and then spent the weekend learning whole new ways to move his hands and wrists. Took him most of the night, but by the end of the weekend he felt he'd finally mastered his web shooters.

For the first week of October, things were actually pretty routine. Not necessarily quiet, what with the increased workload from the teachers for all the Sixth Years, reading through the Half-Blood Prince's book to catch up on five years of Potion-Making skills that he was now being praised for, and of course Quidditch Practice and being the Team Captain, but at least nobody was trying to kill him. He kind of made it a point to stay out of the Forest, at least until he was more confident in his abilities.

That Saturday, October the fifth was the first opportunity Harry had since completing his web shooters to really go out and stretch his webs again, to turn a phrase. As always he waited until nightfall before donning his Silk suit and web shooters and crawling out the window of Gryffindor Tower and then go swinging between the towers and walkways of the castle and just having fun with it. He stayed away from the Astronomy Tower that night though, sensing that there were a few... couples taking up residence there. He even, risking it a bit, swung out into the Forbidden Forest, but this time making sure not to go too deep or anywhere near Acromantula territory. While taking the opportunity, he fully tested the latest version of his web shooters, leaving all sorts of webs in the trees between Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. Some super sticky, some rigid and sturdier than any naturally occurring web, and others with a variety of other effects. He even had a couple webs that mixed with water that turned that water into a solid block of webbing, and another that was coated with acid that could eat through the toughest material around.

After a few hours he was getting pretty tired. Well, not really, but his arms, specifically the area around the glands in his arms, were starting to ache like whenever he overused a muscle, but also in a way that reminded him of dry eye. He shrugged it off and headed back up to the castle, web swinging the whole way there. With every web line he shot out though, the gritty pain in his arms got worse convincing him more than anything that he was more tired than he thought.

It wasn't until he was swinging from the castle gates up to Gryffindor tower that he began to suspect otherwise. There were seven or eight towers between the main gate and Gyrffindor tower. After taking a brief rest at the top corner of the gate, next to one of the gargoyles, he shot out a line to the nearest tower and zipped half the distance before shooting out another to swing around. Both web lines, he noticed, were thinner than normal, and he felt them give more than he was used to. The next line he shout out was thinner still and his arm gave a sharp, shooting pain for the duration that he shot the webbing out.

While he managed to hang on to his next swing, he decided not to use that arm anymore tonight... until the exact same thing happened with his _other_ arm too!

Unfortunately, he still had five more towers to go, and he wasn't exactly in a safe position at the moment, so he tried using both at the same time, to at least let him zip around to the next tower and he could wall crawl from there. The web lines that came out didn't even go halfway before falling away, useless.

"Uh oh," Harry said to himself, still mid-air from his last swing.

Clenching his arm, he tried to squeeze every last drop of webbing that he had left into just one more web line. Sadly, he realized when his only response was a soft '_squelch_' sound, from _BOTH_ arms, that he already had squeezed out every last drop!

"Oh bloody hellll!" he cried out as he suddenly found himself in an unintended free fall, without a safety line!

He was almost exactly in between the nearest towers and without a web line to draw him closer to either one, he was going to fall right down between them, unless he did something and fast!

No clue as to what to do, he went with his instincts and spread his arms and legs out to the side. A feeling like he'd done something wrong shot through him, as well as the instinct of how to do it right. Not willing to debate himself at the moment, he brought both his arms and legs together again and more slowly and deliberately pulled them out to the side. He felt the suit pull just a little bit, and then all of a sudden he felt a tug from the sleeves of his inner arms and legs. On top of that, he was slowing down and was now gliding closer to the tower ahead of him.

Risking a glance down at himself, he was stunned to see that somehow, filament thin webs had formed between his arms and torso, and between his legs as well. A brief bit of experimentation showed him that he could direct how far and what direction he was going in. Enough that he could loop around the remaining towers and managed to fall far enough that he reached Gryffindor tower, albeit a bit lower than he'd ever been on it before.

The moment he pulled his arms and legs apart to catch himself on the side of the wall, he felt the webs tug at his sleeves again, but rather than tear away, as he'd feared would happen, they merely retracted back into the fibers of the suit like they'd never been there. Or perhaps had always been there.

"I love this suit!" Harry declared once he was safely on the side of the tower wall.

Taking the time to kiss his own hands, arms and legs, he eventually calmed down from his latest near-death experience and focused on climbing back up to his dorm room. On top of that, he considered what it was that had put him in the near-death experience in the first place. His arms still ached, and that dry eye feeling was worse than ever. He refrained from testing out his webbing abilities for the time being, not wanting to risk permanent damage to himself just for the sake of curiosity.

Climbing in the window and then into bed, after taking off and hiding the suit and his web shooters of course, Harry lay awake for a short time after, examining the glands on his arms, hoping to find some clue as to what had happened to him.

He fell asleep before any insights came to him.

However, a rather strange dream came instead.

"_Wormtail!"_

"_Y-yes m-my Master?"_

"_Your arm, Wormtail," hissed the Dark Lord Voldemort._

"_Y-yes, Master," whimpered, the rat-faced Death Eater known as Wormtail held out his left arm, the sleeve rolled up to expose the snake-entwined skull, the Dark Mark. Voldemort put his wand to the Mark and a few moments later, several black streams of light and smoke appeared in the room._

_Over a dozen Death Eaters, fully garbed and masked, knelt and then stood before their Dark Lord._

"_My friends," the Dark Lord spoke in a deceptively soft voice, "Thank you for coming on such short notice. There has been news of our impending plans. All is ready for the next raid on Azkaban Prison, and soon we shall free our wayward allies. Bellatrix, my dear, I'm sure your sister is quite beside herself with worry for her husband. Please assure her that they will be reunited before the rising of the next full moon."_

"_Of course milord, I will be happy too," the masked Death Eater with frizzy hair peeking from under her hood bobbed a short curtsy, her voice trembling with either fear or excitement._

"_Once we have rescued our comrades, our true work will then begin," Voldemort told them, never staying still, moving around the circle at random. "Of course I still await word of the young Malfoy heir and the task I have assigned to him. But I am confident, as you all should be, that his blood will run true and he will find some cunning means of distracting the Old Fool long enough for us to make quite the impression on our fellow wizards. Greyback! How goes your... recruiting?"_

"_It goes well, my lord," the only other unmasked Death Eater (other than Wormtail) bowed to the Dark Lord as he answered. "I'll have another thirty under my control by the next full moon, and more than that infected for control by the end of next month."_

"_That is good to hear," Voldemort almost mockingly nodded his head with a false smile. "Double it."_

_Greyback opened his mouth, probably to protest, but instead after only a moment to take a breath, all he did was nod his head and say, "Yes my lord."_

"_Macnair, those supplies I told you to get?"_

"_Will be here before the end of the week, my lord. The Rhemm's Blood..." Voldemort turned and glared at the speaking Death Eater, silencing him immediately._

"_We will be having words after we are through here, Macnair," the Dark Lord hissed from inches away, having moved across the room so quickly nobody had seen anything._

"_Until we have retrieved our comrades from Azkaban," he turned to the rest, speaking with more than just a stern tone of voice, "no one is to go out for any—reveling. We will need every able wand for the operation, and there is to be no foolishness beforehand that could get any of you or your underlings caught. I do hope I have made myself quite clear."_

_There was not a sound in the room after Voldemort finished speaking. He seemed to take this as acknowledgment of his command and slowly walked out of the circle and to the wide double-doors of the room. Wormtail soon followed after, and it was only after the doors had slammed shut did all of the Death Eaters Disapparate away... and the dream end._

Harry awoke with a gasp, sunlight streaming into his eyes. At least he wasn't stuck to the ceiling this time, he thought to himself as he untangled his limbs from his bedsheets.

His arms no longer hurt, he noticed. Looking around to make sure the coast was clear, he shot off a single web line from each gland just to make sure. They came out same as always, but he could also feel that he was still close to 'empty' though it was improving by the minute. Some food would probably help in that regard.

Apparently, as he'd found out the hard way last night, his supply of webbing was not infinite. In fact it was quite finite. But, just like any biological function, his body was producing more all the time. It just seemed that with all his experimenting, he'd worked his way through all that he had 'saved up' so far. Recalling that he sometimes woke up with webs sticking to his sheets or was pulling excess from the inside of his robes during the day, he wondered about that.

Perhaps he was constantly producing webbing and anything more than the glands could contain 'leaked' out in various forms. _So_, he though to himself, _why not come up with a way to collect the excess and have it to use for the next time I run dry? Maybe even add a function to the web shooters to switch to it the extra cartridges when that happens?_

He toyed with the thought off and on all through breakfast and the rest of the morning. Finally, he decided to go to one of the few people he trusted to at least know something that could help him, but also keep it quiet. He made his way to the dungeons to Professor Slughorn's office.

"Professor Slughorn? Are you there? Would you mind if I talked to you about something?" Harry knocked on the door. It was almost instantly opened and he was greeted by the overly friendly smiling face of the new Potions Professor.

"Harry my boy!" Professor Slughorn greeted the young Gryffindor. "Come in! Come in! What can I do for you today?"

Entering the Professor's office, Harry went straight to the point and asked, "Professor, I have a... let's call him a friend of a friend. This friend of a friend needs to know how Acromantula silk is gathered and stored. Gathered straight from the source as it were, and stored for later use. Can you help me? Offer advice I mean?"

"Acromantula silk you say?" repeated Professor Slughorn, a gleam of greed shinning in his eyes.

"Yes Professor," Harry replied, ignoring the gleam and instead focusing on keeping his expression poker face neutral.

"Well of course I'll help you m'boy! Tell me," the Professor then asked him as he started rummaging around in one of his trunks, "have you given much thought to coming our next Slug Club meeting? I'm also planning a little soiree come Christmas time. I don't suppose you would be interested in coming, would you?"

"It's a bit too early for me to say Professor," Harry answered rather diplomatically. "Is that what you were looking for?" he pointed to the case the man now held in his hands.

"Oh, yes, yes!" the Potions Professor nodded his head so quickly his jowls actually vibrated.

Placing the box before Harry, he then opened it to reveal row upon row of sealed glass tubes. The impressive thing was that they weren't sealed with corks or wax, but with oddly shaped metal funnels. Harry took one out and was intrigued to find that they were small enough that he could easily put them on his web shooters without too much difficulty and still keep them out of sight.

"How does it work?" Harry asked, having already deduced that this is what he'd come to ask for.

"Oh it's really quite ingenious. I happen to know the inventor of this splendid little device. I can never get his name right, he's from China you see. But he made this so that all you have to do is put the little funnel end there right up against the silk glands and it fills right up. Acromantula are so large and produce so much silk that they don't even use, that a skilled hand can fill up a whole case with none being the wiser. Now, Harry..."

"It can't be that simple," Harry muttered to himself. He pulled out his wand and ran a generic diagnostic spell. He was not disappointed, even though Slughorn pulled out his own and cast _Finite_ in a flash, but not before Harry saw the diagnostic results. Unbreakable charms, expanded space charms and a vacuum charm around the funnel. All he had to do was get some broken utensils from the kitchens and some more work on his transfiguration skills and he'd soon have his newest web shooters finished and ready for action.

"Harry!" the teacher screamed at him, slamming the box shut. "What were you thinking?"

"About how my friend can keep harvesting silk for after we fill this case up for you, Professor," the student grinned up at his teacher, having long since figured out the way the man thought. "So that way we can... leave our options open."

"Hm? Oh really?" there was that gleam again, "And what pray tell might you want for this... treasure?"

"Do you still have the rest of that cauldron of Felix Felicis?" he asked straight-forward, opening the negotiations rather aggressively.

"Oh, now, my boy, I'm afraid that would be..."

"I'll have the entire case filled by tomorrow night," Harry grabbed the case and walked out the door before any actual negotiating could be done. Besides, he needed to figure out how to work these things into his current web shooters so that he could make good on his promise of having them all filled by tomorrow night.

Thankfully it was easier to figure out than he expected and apparently he produced at least as much silk as a full grown adult Acromantula, since it took a full grown adult Acromantula approximately an hour to fill up one case, and Harry managed it in the same amount of time, give or take a few minutes. The rest of his time he spent, outside of class that is, tinkering with his web shooters and transfiguring every scrap piece of metal he could get his hands on into small metal tubes matching the web silk cartridges. Applying the same charms the originals had on them was even easier. In fact the most time consuming part of it was working out how to work them into his web shooters, and how to further disguise his web shooters as something innocuous.

_**END **Part 4 of 6_


	5. Issue Five of Six

"I can't believe this happened!" Harry shouted at himself, looking down upon the mess with utter dismay.

"What?" Ron called out, concerned over his friend's shout.

"Oh, uh," Harry scrambled to close his trunk, and then winced at the rattling that came from within at his actions. "Let's just say that one of my... outfits just got... messed with."

"Well, let me see," Ron offered, intending on trying to help out.

"No!" Harry quickly lowered his voice, "I mean, no. No, there's... nothing that can be done and... I'll take care of it. Please, Ron? If you must know, a spare potion I was keeping in here spilled all over... my Dress Robes. The ones your mum got for me. I'm going to... see what I can do to save it, but it's a real mess, so?"

"Dungbomb?" Ron guessed.

"Worse," he shook his head, the dismay still swimming through his head, "Much worse."

"All right," the redhead finally nodded and turned to leave the room. "I'll tell Hermione you're going to be a bit late. Catch you later mate?"

"Yeah," he waved and then sat down heavily on his trunk once the door had closed. Hanging his head, he did his best to hold back the tears. After a bit to calm down, he opened the trunk back up and stared. "I can't believe this happened! An _entire cauldron _of _Felix Felicis_? And you just sucked it up?" he screamed into the face of the now vivid silver suit's hood. What's more, there seemed to be _veins_ of webbing that could very well be filled with the expensive potion!

"How did this even happen?" he fell down on the floor before his trunk, staring mournfully at the empty container that had once held enough liquid luck to have _hopefully_ lasted him the rest of the year! He had enough bad luck as it was, he needed all the good luck, especially with now bearing the Mark of the Acromantula, that he could get and then some!

Reaching in, he grabbed the suit again and made to take his frustrations out on it... but suddenly he was overcome by an exceptionally light feeling. Like... well, like he was feeling lucky. With _good_ luck for once!

He put the suit back in his trunk and took out the cauldron. Just like that, the feeling was gone, but the realization from the brief exposure was nearly as heady. Staring back at his closed trunk, he felt he would have to use a levitation charm to pick his jaw up from the floor. "No. Way." Harry said to himself, stunned.

He then looked down at the bottom of the cauldron and noticed a couple drops of residue here and there. He quickly scooped them up and swallowed them as soon as he could, inspiration driving him. A brief surge of that same feeling, that everything was going to be all right went through him, and left a detailed plan in his head.

Harry quickly jumped to the ceiling and gathered the past two week's worth of web cartridges, IE all of them, and then added the ones he was currently filling to them. He then went out the window and jumped as quickly as he could to the main courtyard, out of sight, before walking back inside and making his way to the dungeons and the Potions classroom.

Once there, he almost literally ran into Professor Slughorn as the man was coming out. Luckily, neither of them dropped what they were carrying, which was both very expensive and very rare, on both counts. On the other hand, for whatever reason, Professor Slughorn seemed to have put something of vital importance in a nearly identical wooden box as what Harry kept all his web cartridges in.

"Oh, Professor, I'm so sorry, I was just coming to see to you..." Harry started to say, but the look of urgent panic in his Potions Professor distracted. As did the man scrambling to juggle both boxes all of a sudden. Harry's hands snapped out, grabbing both with easy grips and handed the Professor his own box of webbing while hanging on to the Professor's. "Are you all right, Professor Slughorn?"

"What?" the man clutched the box possessively and glanced up and down the hall before looking Harry over once. "Oh! Harry, m'boy! Didn't see you there! Terribly sorry, but I have... an appointment that I need to keep. Need to hurry along. Oh, and Harry, if your supplier ever has a batch of that silk he wants to unload ever again, be sure to look me up first, won't you? Really must go now!"

With that hurried statement, the portly man raced down the hall and up the stairs. Harry grinned and waved pleasantly at the man's retreating back, and then slowly looked down at the box in his hands and considered. Hey, he may not be a thief, but as far as Harry was concerned, he and the good Professor had just completed another transaction, similar to what they'd done just the week prior. Time to see what he'd bought.

Opening the box, Harry was confused. There were three cordials in there. One filled with a blood red viscous fluid, another with a bright blue liquid that looked like some kind of healing elixir, and the third was a clear water-like substance. Just before he closed the lid however, he glimpsed a note tucked into the lid.

Pulling it out and reading it over real quick, he snapped the lid shut and hastily made his way back up to Gryffindor Tower. The most expedient means Harry had available to him involved wall crawling and web slinging his way back, stealth be damned. Instead, he casually and very normal and all made his way up the Grand Staircase and gave the Fat Lady the password and again very typically made his way past through the Common Room and up the stairs to his dorm room. Completely ignoring the fact that nobody had seen him leave in the first place.

Once there, he made sure the room was empty and pulled his suit out again as well as the cauldron that had once held his bartered potion of liquid luck. He poured about half of the clear cordial into the empty cauldron and swirled it around a bit. Then he stuffed the suit, mask, gloves and boots, all of it into the cauldron and poured the entirety of the blue elixir on top of it. Then he sat back and waited.

While he waited, he debated whether he was doing the right thing or not. When he saw the silver silk begin turning blue, he smiled and knew he had his answer.

The clear water-like potion was actually a solution that alchemists and enchanters used to make the effects of potions, which were normally drunk and swallowed by living beings, apply to clothing and other physical objects and still grant the wearer the same magical properties as though he'd drunk it fresh every time he wore it. All that was required was letting whatever item you were wanting enchanted with the potions effects soak until all of it was gone. Or an hour passed, whichever came first.

It took more than one hour, but finally the suit had absorbed the last drop of all of it. Harry didn't hesitate in pouring in the last of the potion solution as well as the entirety of the red cordial. It came out a bit slower, but using the gloves to wipe out the inside of the glass helped make sure he got as much of it as he could. That took even longer, but was worth the wait. Although he did have to leave it in order to go to supper, but when he checked it the next morning, his Acromantula Silk suit had radically changed it's appearance.

Of course that's expected when you mix it with the Water of Life and Re'em's Blood along with a cauldron full of Felix Felicis!

Come the morning, when Harry pulled out the suit, he was equally surprised and pleased with what he found. The boots and gloves were red all the way through, but they also were covered in the web-like veins that Harry knew contained the liquid luck. The mask was also red and covered with the spider web pattern, save for two points around the eyes. There, the same silver white material shone through, though from a distance, against the red they looked solid white. The main body of the costume, and that's what it had become Harry realized, was partially covered in the web pattern, and where it had, the coloring was a bright, vivid red. Where there was no webbing, along the sides and back of the torso and the entirety of the legs, the same blue that the Water of Life had been colored it all evenly.

What Harry found the most interesting were two symbols that had distinguished themselves amongst all the mixing. At the center of the chest on the front, the webbing pattern had coalesced into what looked to be the top angle of your stereotypical image of a spider. On the back, however, the same symbol appeared, just larger, and not made out of the same veined material, but instead was distinguished by the red coloring of the costume standing out against the blue coloring.

"Wonder how it looks now?" he asked himself after looking it over.

Unfortunately, this weekend was a Hogsmeade Weekend and he and his friends had plans. Still, he considered and then finally made a decision. Maybe he could sneak away for an hour or two into the Forest? Test out his new look and see if the other potions had as good an effect as the Felix Felicis did?

Harry stripped down to his boxers and then quickly put on his newly dyed costume, mask and all. It fit the same as always, but where before it made him feel comfortable and at home in his skin for once, now on top of that he felt that same heady rush that everything was all right as well as feelings of vitality and immense strength. He wouldn't know until he had a chance to test it out if there was an actual difference in his strength, but from the feel of it, he knew he was a whole lot stronger wearing this than before.

Looking in the mirror, Harry was stunned at the strong, lithe and powerful figure staring back at him.

The white eyes and the silver-edged spider emblem on the chest were particularly intimidating, but not nearly as much as the lean muscles that shone through the skintight material. Shaking off the effects of his own vanity, Harry took off the mask, gloves and boots and got dressed in his casual clothes on top of the costume. He left his web shooters in place, hidden by Gryffindor-red wristbands so he could get started on refilling his web cartridge supply. He stuffed the mask, gloves and boots into the bottom of his bag he was planning on taking with him. Among other things, it also contained his gold from Gringott's so he could actually buy some stuff this trip.

Making his way down the stairs, he met up with Ron and Hermione in the Common Room and together they left to join those heading into Hogsmeade for the day. There was a bit of an argument about the Half-Blood Prince's book that he was still using. Just before checking his suit and getting ready for the day, he'd accidentally used a non-verbal spell on Ron that he'd read from the book. He and Ron were having a laugh afterward, but Hermione didn't think it was so funny. Still, all arguments aside, Harry knew Hermione was just worried for him, and he appreciated that.

Also, just before they left the Tower, Ginny came up to him with a message from Dumbledore. Their next 'lesson' would be on Monday night. Watching the redhead walk off, Harry briefly wondered if he'd been dosed with one of Fred and George's love potions as he couldn't help noticing that Ron's little sister was looking a lot more... womanly than before. And when she mentioned going to Hogsmeade with Dean... was that a surge of jealousy?

He shook off any weird feelings and joined Ron and Hermione in walking out the portrait hole.

The walk into Hogsmeade was not enjoyable. Harry wrapped his scarf over his lower face; the exposed part soon felt both raw and numb. The road to the village was full of students bent double against the bitter wind. More than once Harry wondered whether they might not have had a better time in the warm common room, and when they finally reached Hogsmeade and saw that Zonko's Joke Shop had been boarded up, Harry took it as confirmation that this trip was not destined to be fun. Ron pointed, with a thickly gloved hand, toward Honeydukes, which was mercifully open, and Harry and Hermione staggered in his wake into the crowded shop.

"Thank God," shivered Ron as they were enveloped by warm, toffee-scented air. "Let's stay here all afternoon."

"I don't know, could get crowded," Harry chuckled while he instinctively ducked around behind his friends. He wasn't entirely sure why he'd done that until he caught sight of Professor Slughorn out of the corner of his eye wearing an enormous furry hat with a large overcoat with matching fur collar. It took a bit of dancing here and there, but every time that he would have been within the Professor's view, he managed to either stay just outside of it, or to hide behind objects and people just in the nick of time.

"Harry?" Hermione asked after the fourth time he'd ducked behind her just as Professor Slughorn passed them by. "Are you avoiding Professor Slughorn for any reason in particular?"

"Aside from all the typical ones?" he grinned and shrugged.

"They're not that bad, you know. . . They're even quite fun sometimes. . ." But then she caught sight of Ron's expression. "Oh, look—they've got deluxe sugar quills—those would last hours!"

Glad that Hermione had changed the subject, Harry showed much more interest in the new extra-large sugar quills than he would normally have done, but Ron continued to look moody and merely shrugged when Hermione asked him where he wanted to go next.

"Let's go to the Three Broomsticks," said Harry. "It'll be warm."

They bundled their scarves back over their faces and left the sweetshop. The bitter wind was like knives on their faces after the sugary warmth of Honeydukes. The street was not very busy and nobody was lingering to chat, just hurrying toward their destinations. Except for a couple of suspicious characters that immediately triggered Harry's new Danger Sense as being 'Untrustworthy'. For example, just ahead of them were two men, standing outside the Three Broomsticks. One was very tall and thin, who Harry soon recognized as the barman who worked in the other Hogsmeade pub, the Hog's Head. As Harry, Ron, and Hermione drew closer, the barman drew his cloak more tightly around his neck and walked away, leaving the shorter man to fumble with something in his arms. They were only a few feet from him when Harry finally realized who the man was.

"Mundungus!"

The squat, bandy-legged man with a bald head and shiny teeth jumped and near-dropped an ancient suitcase, which looked about to burst open with what looked like the entire contents of a junk shop window.

"Oh, 'ello, 'Arry," said Mundungus Fletcher, with a most unconvincing stab at airiness. "Well, don't let me keep ya."

Harry's hand snapped out and grabbed the case just as it was about to fall from the criminal Order member's grasp. Rather than hand it back, he took a quick look through it and glared hatefully at the weaselly little wizard. "Are you selling this stuff?" he asked, only a hint of his anger coming through in his voice.

"Oh, well, gotta scrape a living," said Mundungus, "Oy! Gimme that!"

Harry's other hand reached out and almost casually held the older man's hand like stopping a child from reaching into the cookie jar. Harry handed the case to Ron and put himself between his friends and what his Danger Sense was screaming at him was an active threat.

"Hang on," Ron said slowly, "This looks familiar..."

"Thank you!" said Mundungus, trying to snatch the goblet out of Ron's hand and the case along with it. "Well, I'll see you all — OUCH!"

Harry had pinned Mundungus against the wall of the pub by the throat. His friends were less surprised by his actions than they were by the fact that he was holding the, admittedly shorter, man several inches off the ground with nothing but a single hand. He reached for his wand, but instead went with his instincts and punched the thief in the gut. Not as hard as he could, but clearly hard enough to knock the wind from the windbag.

"Harry!" Hermione screamed.

"You stole that from Sirius's house!" accused Harry, holding the thief straight back against the wall with no visible effort. "That had the Black family crest on it. What did you do? Go back the night he died and strip the place bare?"

Mundungus probably would have tried to defend himself at this point, but he was too busy gasping for breath to do much else than turn blue in the face and gasp like a ruptured pipe. Harry growled and started to lean in a bit, and the thief's face started to turn a mottled purple. Hermione grabbed at Harry's arm and shouted, "Harry, you mustn't!"

Just before it happened, Harry's Danger Sense screamed its own warning at him, and he only just managed to react in time, letting go of Mundugus right when there was a loud bang. The thief fell to the ground, gasping and rubbing his throat for a moment before making a grab for his case. Just before that could happen though, Harry was once again between him and his friends and physically threw the man back into the wall. Subtly, pulling back on his arm bands and gloves, he shot a couple of web nets over the thief's fists and feet. To the outside observer, it looked kind of like Mundungus had just put his hands in those Acromantula webs that were appearing all over the place of late, rather than being actively webbed by one.

Whimpering, Mundungus gave one last glare to Harry and the case that Ron still held before Disapparating with a loud CRACK! Harry frowned and reconsidered what type of webbing to use to hold someone in the future.

"Come back you thieving—!" he shouted at the empty air.

"There's no point, Harry," said Tonks, coming out of nowhere, her mousy brown hair wet from sleet. "Mundungus is probably in London by now. There's no point in yelling."

"He nicked this stuff from Sirius!" Harry rounded on her, angry at her indifference.

Ron held up the suitcase as evidence, and Tonks seemed to hesitate before nodding her head. "I'll take care of it. You three should get inside. It's freezing out here." Ron handed over the case and Tonks stood and watched as all three of them walked inside.

"He was nicking from Sirius!" Harry exploded the moment the warmth of the Three Broomsticks embraced them. "He was _stealing_ from me!"

"Please Harry!" Hermione hissed, dragging him off to a table. "I know, Harry, I know what it's like, but you can't shout about it like this. You're drawing attention." She subtly gestured to a few characters that were even now staring at them.

Harry took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He'd found himself doing that a lot more lately. His new-found physical strength tended to be more destructive when he lost his temper. The incident with Malfoy and the bookends being a prime example. There had been other, smaller incidents that had him watching his temper and his strength at all times. Aragog had not exaggerated when he'd called this power a great responsibility.

Ron and Hermione started fighting. Well, not really. Ron was waiting to order drinks from the rather popular and voluptuous Madam Rosemerta, and Hermione knew that's who he was waiting for, despite nothing of the sort being said out loud. Just as it was coming to a head, Harry suggested they just head on back to the castle. It hadn't been a particularly pleasant trip, and they all had things to do besides.

They made to leave, right behind Katie Bell and one of her friends, only something was wrong and only Harry seemed to know it. The closer he stepped to Katie, the more he was sure of it. Something was off with his friend and fellow Gryffindor Quidditch player. And there was something _really wrong_ with that package she was carrying. Unfortunately, there was nothing that he could do in the foyer of the Three Broomsticks. And once they stepped out into the cold, Ron and Hermione would be huddled against him and he would be forced to answer questions that he still was not prepared to face. Which really left him with only one option.

"Uh, guys, I've got to... uh, go," he made a none-too-subtle gesture. "Go on ahead, I'll catch up. Really, I will!" he then turned and visibly walked into the men's privey.

Hermione and Ron waited about a minute, and then shrugged and bundled up their cloaks and hurried out the door into the freezing precipitation. They were only a minute or so behind Katie Bell and her friend, and could hear snippets of the heated conversation they were having as it was carried back on the wind. All of a sudden, they were fighting over the package that Katie was carrying and looked ready to drop it or tear it apart the way each was trying to get it out of the other's hands.

Without warning, the package was covered in webs and yanked quite forcefully out of both their grips. Tracking where it flew off to, all anyone saw was a shadowed figure, hidden mostly by the storm, jump and then swing off into the trees. Katie immediately took off after it while those left behind shouted for her to stop and to come back.

A few moments later, Katie reappeared out of the snow and sleet, cocooned in what looked to be more webbing. It was no ordinary webbing, however. They soon discovered, in trying to pull it off of her, that it was very brittle, but no less binding. Also, it smelled kind of funny. Like Perforata, Hermione said, commonly called St. John's Wort.

When Harry caught up to them a couple minutes after, they did not question what took him so long or how it was he tore apart the web cocoon so easily when they'd been having so much trouble with it only moments before. After Katie was released, she admitted to not knowing what was going on and her last memory was of heading off to the loo and someone coming up behind her. Then nothing until the moment she landed in the snow, wrapped up in a web cocoon.

Given how cold it was, none of them were too keen on just standing around discussing it, so they all hurried back to the castle and immediately sought out their Head of House to tell her of the stranger occurrence. None of them knew, except maybe for one, just how close Katie had come to being horribly cursed and bed-ridden for months afterward. He, on the other hand, had no inclination of informing them of just how close to disaster they all had come.

While Harry wished that Katie could remember who had put her under the Imperius Curse, or even what it is they wanted her to do while under it, he had his suspicions and he was just grateful that she hadn't been hurt. When he'd yanked that package away from her, the moment his web line had made contact with it he knew that it contained a horribly cursed item. It was practically living death, if such a thing were even possible in the first place. He'd kept it wrapped up in his webs and then launched it in the general direction of the Acromantula grounds and hoped Gargrog would be the one to find it.

_**END** Part 5 of 6_


	6. Issue Six of Six

Harry stared at himself in the mirror. Thankfully, after the first few comments from it, it had quieted down and left him alone with his thoughts. He'd sometimes wondered about the talking mirrors of the Wizarding World, but nobody ever made that big of a deal over them, so neither did he. He was wearing the costume that had been his Acromantula Silk Suit.

He was completely unrecognizable as himself. In the red and blue costume, all you could see was a faceless man, lithe, muscular, and it was the silver-white eyes that almost glowed at times that really got you. Harry very nearly intimidated himself, save for the fact that he didn't really intimidate easily. It helped that he knew it was his own reflection rather than an enemy he might have to fight.

He'd taken to wearing the costume under his school robes, wearing the boots instead of socks and his shoes over them, while keeping the mask and gloves in his inner-pockets where no one could see them. Since the incident with Katie on the way back up to the Castle from Hogsmeade, there had been more than a few incidents where he'd had to strip off his robes, put on the mask and gloves and stick to the shadows as he did what he did; try and save people.

Not long after the incident with Katie, somehow a Pygmy Puff got into a potion that it wasn't supposed to and then went on a rampage. What actually happened, Harry didn't hear about until a while after the fact, but apparently Arnold, Ginny Weasley's Pygmy Puff that she bought from her brothers at their shop, sampled some left-over Growing Solution and then attacked a number of other bottled potions in the room in attempt to wash it out. The end result was the Pygmy Puff was no longer pygmy-sized, and it more resembled a fluffy saber-toothed tiger, only with no actual cat-parts.

It had been running all over Gryffindor Tower with Ginny running after it, until some poor sap came in, opening the portrait hole long enough for the now lethal-sized Puff to get out and start terrorizing the rest of the school. Afterward, Filch would raise nearly as much of a ruckus as Ginny's pet did as it ran down the halls, bouncing off the walls, knocking portraits and suits of armor over.

The moment the door opened, Harry was jumping up the stairs to his dorm room. Along the way, he removed his heavy school robes, putting on his gloves and mask by the time he was in the room and out the window. He immediately swung around to the nearest open balcony on the Seventh Floor of the Castle and stuck to the ceiling as he crawled along, following the noise of the rampaging Puff.

Didn't take long to find it, but keeping up with it was another matter entirely. It was faster than he was in a flat out race, plus it cheated by bouncing off the walls and jumping everywhere, whereas he was stuck wall-crawling as he did not want to risk being found out and thus stuck to the shadows. The one thing he did manage was to block off every exit to the Grand Staircase with some quick-drying, and steel-hard web walls. They evaporated after only half an hour, but in exchange they kept their strength and resilience until only a few seconds before said evaporation occurred.

Unfortunately, Harry underestimated Arnold's enthusiasm for his new found freedom, or how that would lead it into parts of the Castle that even he hadn't known about. Harry did his best to chase after the transformed Puff, but it was just so damn fast! Ultimately, he had to resort to web zipping just to keep up, and even then, the Puff would often take sudden turns with more and more regularity once it had realized it now had a playmate.

It took the better part of an hour, but eventually Harry managed to corner it near the dungeons, at the end of hallway that had only a secret passage that neither he nor the Puff were about to say in order to open it. Shooting another web wall in the passage behind him, Harry trapped himself in with the transfigured Puff and tried to figure out how he was going to capture it long enough to get it to the School Infirmary.

Thankfully Arnold wasn't angry or in an aggressive mood, otherwise Harry was sure he would have a much harder time of it. As it was, the Puff was in a 'playful' mood, and unfortunately Arnold no longer seemed to be aware of his own strength, or the fact that he had lethal claws and fangs. And so, while ducking and dodging the best that he could, Harry had to find some way of slowing the giant Puff's movements, or some other way of tiring him out. Fortunately, Harry's latest version of his web shooters had provided him with the perfect choice webbing to use in this fight. It created a sort of exploding web shot that covered everything around it in super-sticky webbing.

Took a few tries, but eventually Harry managed to web down Arnold's feet and legs long enough to land a few well-timed strikes. After the Puff was finally knocked out, Harry wrapped him up in his strongest, longest-lasting webbing and drug him up to the Hospital Wing, where he then left the potion-altered pet hanging in a web net long enough for Ginny to find him.

If anybody had seen him during the entire adventure, he made sure he was moving quickly enough that all they would have seen was a red-blue blur.

Madam Pomphrey found the package left for her on her doorstep as it were and after calling the other teachers together, and notifying Ginny that they had found her pet, Arnold was soon put to rights. Harry soon joined her in the Hospital Wing, ostensibly for emotional support, but really to make sure that the over-sized Puff didn't get free and go on a rampage again. Dean, Ginny's boyfriend, never once made an appearance. When they argued about it at dinner, very loudly and in public, Dean cited that he was busy doing something else at the time, and when he finally heard anything about it, the whole mess was already taken care of. Regardless, Arnold was once again a _Pygmy_ Puff before the day was through.

After the Arnold Incident, which had taken place in the middle of the week, there was another situation that Harry found himself in the middle of. No one was sure how it happened in the first place, but one afternoon, rumors started flying around that that were a bunch of First Years missing. It wasn't until the teachers started running around and halfway through the last class of day ordered everyone back to their Common Rooms for a headcount that Harry began to suspect that it was true.

Professor McGonagall made it plain when they made it back to Gryffindor Tower. There had been a group of First Years on their way to a detention with Hagrid, only they never showed up. And the Prefect that had been in charge of escorting them to said detention was likewise missing.

Harry, Ron and Hermione didn't hesitate in racing up to the dorm room and grabbing the Marauder's Map. Together they scoured every inch of the map but couldn't find even one of the missing First Years, let alone the missing Prefect, Zacharias Smith. Then, just for an instant, there and gone again, one of the First Years appeared on the map, but what was so odd about it was that they appeared in the middle of one of the secret passages around school and then disappeared again. That particular secret passage, Harry recognized as being more of a pipe than a true passage.

When it first happened, neither Ron nor Hermione were inclined to believe him, thinking that he'd misread one of the other moving dots, until it happened again, but this time it was Hermione. It was a different secret passage, but logically speaking, it could have been along the same set of pipes. Looking further down from where the same pipe would theoretically continue on for, they focused their search, and Ron spotted the dot the next time.

"They're in the pipes?" asked Ron. "How is that even possible?!"

Harry and Hermione glanced at each other, the same idea sparking through their minds at the same instant. They nodded to each other as they confirmed what they both suspected and answered their friend.

"The Chamber of Secrets."

"What?" Ron gulped.

"The basilisk, Slytherin's creature, it kept getting around through the school via the pipes, remember?" Hermione reminded him.

"Go and tell Professor McGonagall," Harry ordered, putting away the map. "I'm going to see if I can't find some other way in to the Chamber of Secrets and help them out. Cover for me for as long as you can. If I'm not back by dinner time, tell everyone where I went. I'll be back as soon as I can," Harry told them, already walking out the door. He was really glad he'd started wearing his costume under his clothes rather than keep it locked up in his trunk.

Rather than go down the stairs to the Common Room, he went up and slipped into the next open door, which just so happened to be the dorm room for the Seventh Years. Thankfully they were all still down in the Common Room with the rest of the House. Harry quickly slipped out of his school uniform and fashioned a long-lasting web that he turned into a bag for his clothes. Once his mask was on, he made his way out the window and then up to the top of the tower. He hid his bag of clothes there, tucked out of the way so there was little chance of someone else finding them. Then he made his way for Myrtle's bathroom.

After a couple of months with his powers and training all over the castle, he knew a few shortcuts to get him where he needed to be, all without being seen. And he knew for a fact that he would know the moment he was spotted, thanks to his Danger Sense. It had taken him a while, but he'd finally figured out that the overwhelming sense of being watched whenever he was in the castle came from his Danger Sense, and mostly because he _was_ being watched!

Therefore, thanks again to his trusty unicorn-given Danger Sense, he knew the moment he was in danger of being seen and as such knew exactly what to do and where to go so he _wouldn't_ be seen!

Once in the haunted bathroom, he stayed on the ceiling and used Parseltongue to open the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Myrtle started crying, of course, but thankfully didn't leave her toilet, so the moment the entrance was open, he dove headfirst down into it.

And almost immediately regretted it.

"Ew! Yuck! Don't hurl, don't hurl, don't hurl!" he said to himself as he crawled through the slime covered pipes. He only prayed that the cleaning spell would work on his costume after this was over with.

Once he got down to the actual cave part, he dropped down and made his way past the cave-in to the actual Chamber of Secrets. Another near-silent hiss and the door groaned open, allowing him access. Ignoring the scene of a rather memorable battle, and the near-death experience of two young Hogwarts students, (him and Ginny), he web swung his way over to the large pipes and pathways that seemingly made their way through the entire school.

Unsure of which way to go without the map, Harry took his best guess and swung his way down one of the many random pipes branching out from the Chamber. A short time later, he started wondering where all the dark magical creatures had come from.

Fire crabs, Flame Salamanders, Doxies, Ghouls, Redcaps, and he could have sworn he came across a Blast-Ended Skrewt at one point or another! That was just the beginning and didn't even count the 'normal' monsters of snakes, spiders, scorpions, and rats. Most, if not all poisonous or deadly in one form or another!

Fortunately, Harry remembered quite well how to deal with most of those creatures from his Third Year Defense Against The Dark Arts classes. And for the rest, well, he was a lot stronger and quicker than your average neighborhood wizard, not to mention his web powers. His Danger Sense let him know if he was in over his head, as well as exactly what the threat was in the first place, so all the dark creature didn't even slow him down in his search for the missing students.

He didn't know exactly how long he'd expected it to take to find them, but when he finally did come across the First Year that he'd seen on the Map before, he couldn't help thinking to himself that it had taken longer than whatever that expectation had been. Unfortunately, knowing that there were still a half-dozen missing students, finding just one didn't mean his job was over.

The kid, he forgot his name, was actually doing pretty well in avoiding the worst of the dark creatures, and foul-tempered as Snape was, apparently he was a decent enough DADA teacher given that the kid was adequately using what spells he did know to get past those creatures that he could. Hope he doesn't scare easy after all this, Harry mused to himself.

"Hey kid, been looking all over for you," he called out from the top of the tunnel they occupied.

"AHHH!" he screamed and started shooting spells in Harry's general direction.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Kid! I'm on your side! I'm here to get you out of this place and back into the Castle proper!" he quickly shouted, dodging the incoming spell-fire. "Now you gonna let me or not?"

"Who-who-WHO ARE YOU?!" the First Year screamed at the shadows.

Harry dropped down behind the boy and silently waited for him to turn around. When he did, it was very slowly, and he jumped when he finally caught sight of the older student in-costume.

"Who—what are you?" the young boy asked, thankfully no longer shouting.

"..." Harry wasn't sure how to respond to that. He definitely wasn't going to tell them his real name, he'd be found out the instant they were all back safe in the school. Finally he shrugged and said the first thing that came to mind. "I'm the Wizard-Acromantula. Basically a magical, like you, that has all the powers of an Acromantula."

"So... you're some kinda... Spider... Man?" the boy questioned.

Harry leaned down until his masked face was right above the boy's and repeated slowly, "Wizard-Acromantula." Then he leaned back and casually asked, "So what's your name, kid?"

"Bruce," he answered after gulp or two. "Bruce Campbell. I'm in Gryffindor. With Harry Potter!"

"Good for you. Where are the rest?" he asked, moving past the unwanted praise and onto the business at hand. "It's kind of why I'm down here, you see. To rescue all of the First Years that went missing?"

"They're still with Prefect Smith," Bruce answered right away. "He got hurt in the fall and I went to get help... But, uh, I got lost."

"Right then," Harry nodded and made a couple of quick decisions. "Hold on tight, we're going to be moving fast."

"Wait, what?" Bruce startled as Harry picked him up and put him on his back. A little concentration had the kid stuck there just as well as if he'd webbed him down. Then he jumped back up to the ceiling and started crawling back to the Chamber of Secrets.

"Whhaaahhh!" Bruce screamed, at first, until Harry started swinging and he began to get used to it and then all of a sudden he was screaming in joy and urging the young hero to go faster. "Wwaaahhhwhooohhh!"

"So, which way?" Harry asked once they were past the worst of the dark creatures and slowed down a bit to a more restrained web-slinging speed.

"Huh? Why'd you slow down?" the boy on his back shouted in his ear.

"Where are the others, Bruce?" he ignored the question and asked his own again.

"Oh, uh... that way, I think" he pointed at a random tunnel they had just passed.

Harry shot out a line and turned them around, executing a long, wide turn that took them into the tunnel that had been pointed at. The tunnel soon grew small enough that web swinging was no longer an option and after one final turn, Harry could see that it stretched out for about a mile before ending at a dead end, a thick metal grate visible from even this far away. Harry stopped and looked expectantly over his shoulder at Bruce.

"Uh, oops?" he shrugged.

Harry sighed, the sound muffled through his mask, and then turned and started making his way back to the Chamber of Secrets yet again. He didn't bother asking Bruce for directions any more.

It took the better part of another hour, but eventually they found the other lost First Years and the injured Prefect. They were trapped in a cave tunnel that had been sealed off by the very same sinkhole that had trapped them in the network of caves and dark passages in the first place. Bruce had been lucky to squeeze through the hole that he had in order to get back to the Castle, without getting further trapped or injured along the way.

Now that he knew where they all were, he could start thinking up ways to get them safely back to the Castle proper, and Zacharias to the Hospital Wing. Unfortunately, the Universe decided that it couldn't give the budding hero such an easy task. Not without throwing a lot more hurdles for him to overcome first.

On all sides of the missing students were at least ten of everything in the Dark Creatures handbook that gets covered during Third Year Defense Against the Dark Arts. And the only things that there were exactly ten of were the Acromantula, thankfully not fully matured. They were the wolf-sized kind.

"What the heck is he doing down there?!" Harry shouted, referring to Zacharias, who should be protecting the First Years, injured or not.

"Prefect Smith got hurt and he was still knocked out when I went for help," said Bruce.

"Perfect," Harry sighed and handed the young boy the end of a web line he'd just made. "Hold on to this, keep everybody in one spot. I'll take care of everything else. Hurry!"

Once he had his hands free and all the First Years were in one place, Harry started to move, keeping all the dark creatures away from them. He was thinking that maybe just a few web shots would be enough to discourage them all, but unfortunately they just kept coming. The Acromantula for him, everything else for the First Years. A few well-aimed strikes had the Acromantula offspring knocked out and restrained, allowing him to then deal with the Redcaps that had been moving in on the students.

The bloodthirsty under-fey were pretty nasty and they ignored his web shots like they were leaves blown by the wind. Unfortunately, Aragog's instinctual knowledge didn't exactly cover how to deal with everything around him, so that meant falling back on his wizard training. Except that said wizard training involved use of a wand and counted on it just being one Redcap, not thirty to fifty!

Having no choice, Harry put himself between the creatures and their targets and did the only other thing that he knew to do in these circumstances. He punched and kicked like his life depended on it.

Thankfully, where his Acromantula powers and Wizard training failed him, his Unicorn powers picked up right where he needed them to.

His body was dodging, bobbing and weaving through the fangs, claws, talons, and other lethal appendages flying at him, quite often several at once. Sometimes, he even, in his head, saw a way to counter his avoiding the blow into an attack against several of the creatures at once. His feet and fists were flying almost non-stop and the moment anything got too close to the kids, he was jumping and flipping, sometimes across the entire room, to get there and knock back the advancing hoard.

Some of the creatures weren't as effectively dealt with by his fisticuffs, but thankfully those few were still able to be affected by his webs, of one kind or another. The Doxies were the worst, flying in and biting at him, moving just as fast as he was. A few web shots of the extra sticky webbing was enough to coat the ceiling, walls and floor with a new Doxie wallpaper. After them were the Redcaps, nasty things that always went for cutting or lethal blows and had nasty fangs and claws on them. When up against them, Harry found himself dodging most of the time, landing blows that sent the things flying back to join the Doxies, but were also too strong to be webbed down for long. The real surprise came in finding more than a few of Hagrid's old Blast-Ended Skrewts in the hoard.

Harry had honestly thought the last of them killed during the final event of the Tri-Wizard Tournament two years ago, but apparently enough of them had survived to make it down here and start breeding. Which was another big surprise since the flock that Hagrid had tried raising had all but slaughtered themselves all throughout their development. These, unfortunately, were bigger, faster, and nastier than even the fully matured ones he'd faced in the maze.

Then again, he was also a lot tougher than he'd been then, and a few solid hits, combined with a straight kick just as it 'blasting' forward turned out to be enough to actually crack that exoskeleton of theirs. After that, it was just a matter of putting an acid web shot in between the cracks and they were so much goop in short order.

For the longest time, it would seem like the creatures had no end to them. Then Harry remembered how he'd finally fought off the Acromantula the last time. He webbed some fallen debris and started swinging it around like a giant mace. For the larger creatures, he tied them up and then swung _them_ around like a weapon, knocking more than a few out of the fight for good. Just as he was starting to make some headway, a loud roar echoed throughout the tunnels and a horrid, yet familiar stench followed soon after.

There were Mountain Trolls in the tunnels now.

"Oh come ON! Give! Me! A! Break!" Harry exclaimed in mounting rage, knocking out a creature with every blow.

"Ugh, what...?" Zacharias had finally come too and was trying to make sense of what was going on.

"Finally!" Harry almost breathed a sigh of relief, but he was too busy dealing with the last of the Skrewts to waste the breath. "Smith! Get your wand in gear and help me out here! We've got Trolls on the way!"

"Wait, what? Who are you?" the Hufflepuff Prefect exclaimed.

"No time! Start casting or give up your Prefect badge, because quite obviously you can't handle the responsibility that comes with it!" he taunted the boy back, hoping it did the trick.

"Who are you to tell me what I do and do not deserve?! Stand aside you-you-you miscreant! I shall handle this!" With that he drew his wand and took aim at the remaining dark creatures.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, just cast _Bombarda_ already, would you? Even I know that's the only way to permanently vanquish more than half these things!" he shouted just as he finished acid webbing the last of the Skrewts.

A few well placed explosion curses later, the Trolls were behind the strongest, but shortest lasting, web walls that Harry could fashion and he was soon ferrying the terrified First Years up through the hole they had fallen through and Zacharias was leading them back to the Castle, while being much more careful of where they were stepping of course.

Harry, on the other hand, went back to the main Chamber of Secrets and from there back to Myrtle's bathroom. Along the way, he vowed to further modify his web shooters with a wand sheath, so that this sort of thing, needing his wand and not having it, wouldn't happen again.

After catching up with Ron and Hermione, giving them an excuse of trying to find and open the Chamber of Secrets again, only to fail, Harry learned that Zacharias was claiming to everyone who would listen that he had single-handedly protected and lead the First Years from some evil cave, while the First Years themselves were all talking about some kind of 'spider man' that had actually protected them while Smith was knocked out cold.

Harry laughed along with Ron and scoffed in agreement with Hermione about the First Years' story and Zacharias's selfish actions. Then he ate his fill at dinner and went to bed early. Where he dreamed.

_There was a dark room, lit only by the glow of a few candle chandeliers, which was just enough to see a long wooden table with hooded figures sat along all it's sides. Except at the head of the table. There, the lone figure seated sat with his head uncovered. It was pale white, bald, and serpentine with glowing red eyes. Voldemort._

"_Welcome, my friends," he greeted them with a slight hiss at the end. He spoke in that soft, demeaning way that let everyone that heard him knew he was talking down to them, and that he wanted them to know it. "Let us begin the meeting with the answer to a simple question; how much longer does our brethren need to endure the Ministry's... good... graces... at Azkaban prison? Dolohov?"_

"_Everything is prepared, my lord," one of the hooded figures at the table immediately answered. "All those that were... hesitant before, I have been assured no longer are. Those that would have opposed us or alerted the ones we would rather not hear of our plans, have been silenced or otherwise ensured they will not trouble us. The rest that we have not paid off are of little enough consequence, and my lord did say that he wished to leave notice afterward."_

"_Tomorrow night then?" Voldemort half-confirmed, half-stated._

"_As you say, my lord," the hooded figured nodded it's head._

"_Excellent!" Voldemort softly clapped his fingers together, a mockery of a clap. "Now then, on to other matters."_

_The hooded Death Eaters all shifted nervously. Obviously they were not expecting any 'new business' as it were. Harry already knew from past dreams how the breakout would work. Two dozen Death Eaters would Apparate onto the island, the guards that were on the take or had otherwise been turned would unlock all the doors, gates, and leave the place practically wide open. The rest would take off and with the Dementors gone, that would leave barely a handful of guards that weren't actively on the side of the Dark Lord. The most complicated part was getting robes and the individual wands for those that would be released._

"_Tell me, Bella, how is young Malfoy doing with his task?"_

_Harry was suddenly paying a lot closer attention._

"_He... has not yet succeeded, my lord. He reports that the secondary objective is near completion, however," her voice answered hesitantly. Despite this, he could not pick her out from the rest of the hooded Death Eaters at the table. "If you will it, my lord, I will go and abolish this embarrassment of my family and finish the task myself!"_

"_Ah, Bella, always so eager to please," Voldemort chuckled dryly. "But no. Young Malfoy must earn his place among us. We will permit him to do so. Or die trying at least." He laughed then. Nobody else did, as quite obviously he did not expect them to._

"_Tomorrow night, I want you all to send the rest of our forces that are not apart of the Azkaban mission and attack the following sites," he broke off the laughter suddenly and started issuing orders. "We need a distraction, therefore these assaults are to begin no sooner than one hour before our attack on Azkaban. It will keep the remainder of the Aurors too busy to respond to any potential alerts coming from the island. Lestrange, Macnair, Goyle and Crabbe. You'll each take a group and attack these floo addresses. I have it on good authority the wards will be down around that time."_

"_As you command, my lord," they all said together._

"_Greyback, how goes your recruitment?"_

"_Our numbers have grown threefold since the last meeting, my lord," a voice growled out from the end of the table. "I expect that number to double before midnight tomorrow. And even more the night after as that will be the Full Moon."_

"_Excellent," Voldemort cackled._

_Suddenly the dream changed, and Harry was no longer seeing things as they happened, as had always been the case before with these dreams. No, instead he now saw the potential future. The Azkaban breakout. People getting attacked by werewolves on the night of the full moon as well as half-crazed werewolves that were not yet transformed, but driven to madness by the pain they felt. And then the attacks. The attacks plagued him all night long, every single one of them, over and over and over again and again!_

Harry awoke with a scream.

_The Next Evening_

Harry lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. He was doing more than that though. He was contemplating Aragog's last words to him, as well as the advice of the unicorns. He now possessed a great power, greater than almost any other wizard in the world could even fathom. He still had his magic, could use his wand, cast spells, and was still Harry Potter, The Boy-Who-Lived. And yet in addition to all that made him a wizard and a powerful one at that, he also held the power of the Mark of the Acromantula _with_ the Blessing of the Unicorns.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Odd that the sagest advice he'd ever received in his entire life came from a giant talking spider. Who used to be a pet of the half-giant that reintroduced Harry to the Magical World. OK, it was no longer odd. Well, not _that_ odd anyway.

When Harry considered his 'family' and all they had taught him... well, then it went back to odd. No, it went way past odd into just plain weird!

If he'd been truly raised by the Durlsey's, he suppose his dear Uncle's advice would be somewhere along the lines of; 'with great power comes great rewards' or something equally self-serving as that. Looking at it from Malfoy, Snape's, or Voldemort's point-of-views was even simpler; 'with great power comes great corruption and a greater potential for abuse'. Dumbledore too was easy to predict, but surprisingly it was not the same as what Aragog had told him; 'with great power comes great opportunity', the man never missed a chance to 'turn people to the light' as he was often noted of endorsing.

His friends though, of all the people he knew and could imagine their reactions to being in his position, he would have expected them to be the easiest to guess at, but he was finding it more difficult than he'd thought. At first he had been thinking that Ron would have turned down the offer in the first place, the source of his power being a giant spider of all things, and Ron's arachnophobia was well known. However, assuming that he did accept the power, he further imagined that his male best friend would probably show off to everyone and be quite lazy.

Then he remembered Ron sacrificing himself on a life-sized Wizard Chessboard in First Year. Following Harry into the Forbidden Forest on Hagrid's advice when he could have stayed in the castle, and later dragging Lockhart down into the Chamber of Secrets with him, at wand point! He also remembered Ron getting hurt in the Department of Mysteries, all because he'd followed Harry. The lazy thing to do would have been to stay in the castle, or to call the Order and expect them to take care of it. The selfish thing to do would have been to hand over the prophecy as soon as they were caught rather than fight back. Knowing what he did about Ron's character as well as everything that he'd done since he'd known him... Harry couldn't be certain how Ron would behave if he had the Mark and Blessing instead of him.

Hermione, he started off not even knowing if she'd bother accepting it in the first place. Finally, knowing her sense of responsibility would win out in the end convinced him, though only barely, that she would, but not without asking a whole lot more questions than Harry had, of both Aragog and the unicorns. He also expected that she would've spent more time trying to research her powers rather than train in their use. On the other hand, once she'd start experimenting, he was fully sure that she'd probably have developed the web shooters much quicker and with infinitely more versatile options. And who knows what else!

But... would she be contemplating what he was contemplating at this moment?

In all honesty, Harry had to answer... probably not. She would have told someone and then eventually Dumbledore would have found out and she'd wait for him to tell her what to do. He could see that happening so clearly and so definitely that it became the soul reason he was not going to tell her about his powers any time soon. Sure, she could probably and would gladly construct web shooters and who knows what else for him. But she'd also want him to tell Dumbledore and to do what he and the other members of the Order would tell him to do.

Harry was no one's puppet. Not now, and not ever if he could help it!

That resolution sort of cleared up the confusion over his contemplations all at once.

Harry got up and arranged things so that everyone would think he was sound asleep in his bed. At least until morning when it was time to get up and go to class. Harry fully intended, but mostly he just hoped, to be in bed come morning.

He put on his costume and then exited the tower. It didn't take him long to get to Professor McGonagall's office from there. He stoked the fire and, after a bit of searching, found the pot of Floo Powder she kept on hand. He threw it in the fire and then stated, as clearly as he could, the first of the Floo addresses that Voldemort wanted attacked. Once the flames turned green, he jumped through and trusted his new agility wouldn't let him end up flat on his back.

**END** _Part 6 of 6_

To Be Continued In The Next Installment: "_The Magical Spider-Man_"


End file.
